7. An Educational Outing #2
The magistrate appeared with a leather bound book in his arm, raising his hand to ask for silence, which was only partially granted to him.
“Robert Hendridge, you have been charged with the crime of murder, and have been brought to this place to die!” The magistrate announced, and Hendridge spat at his feet.
“I didn’t fuckin’ do nuffin’!” He shouted, his voice cracking as hysteria began to take over.“Ya can fuck yerself you filfy pig!”
“Do you have any last words?” The magistrate asked, nonplussed.
“I’m innocent!” Hendridge cried. “I never fuckin killed nobody!”
The magistrate closed his ledger, and waved his hand. “String him up.”
Hendridge garbled and protested as the jeers and boos of the crowd drowned him out, and Azriel tapped his cane against the ground.
“Defiant til the very end, one must admire it.”
“Admire what?” I asked, watching as the fight seemed to leave Hendridge’s body. He sagged pathetically as the guards placed a sack over his head.
“The will to live. To survive. Indeed the strongest instinct we as humans have.” He clicked his tongue, leaning forward, one hand braced against the railing. “I do wonder, now, what is going through his head? These final moments, in the dark.”
“I imagine he’s terrified,” I murmured, my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth.
“His whole life must be playing out before him at this moment. Every second, just ticking away, waiting for death.”
The guards stretched the noose around Hendridge’s neck, tightening it and then stepping back.
The man had truly lost any defiance that had been in him, his head rolling forward and his shoulders shaking.
His hands were outstretched before him, as though reaching to some unseen spectre, pleading for help, for pity, for absolution.
He looked so wretched, and I felt such a sense of pity for this man, come here to die in front of these leering crowds, that I found my eyes burning with tears.
Someone had to do something besides cheer on the death of this man, this man they did not know, who had done something they had not witnessed.
But they were here to judge him all the same.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,” I murmured, and Azriel snorted beside me.
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done…” I shook my head and dashed away a tear as it slid down my cheek.
“On Earth as it is in Heaven… Give us this day-” I broke off with a gasp as the trap door beneath Hendridge’s feet gave way, and the man plummeted through, the rope unfurling quickly.
It came to a sharp stop, and Hendridge’s body dangled beneath the gallows.
He was twitching violently, his hands beating alternately against his chest and his thighs.
“Oh dear.” Azriel leaned back in his chair, and shook his head.
“His neck did not break. It is so much better for them when their necks break. Death is quite instant then. But you see, one needs a certain heft to break the neck.” He turned to me, gazing at my profile as I kept my eyes fixed on Hendridge’s dying body.
“Yes, a certain weight on the rope is required, and someone as slight as this wretched man - or perhaps, well, as delicate a build as you - they could not provide that weight. They would be left to be strangled at the end of that noose.”
Tears ran down my face and pooled in the corners of my mouth. “It’s barbaric.”
“Indeed, I’m told it’s a rather dreadful way to die.”
Hendridge’s legs went stiff, convulsions running the length of his body, his arms held stiff against him.
He jerked once, twice, and by the third time, he’d begun to go limp.
Then his whole body seemed to collapse in on itself, and he was simply swinging.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
He was dead.
“What a pious woman you are, Evie.” Azriel ran a finger down the length of my arm. “Praying for this poor man’s soul, and even shedding tears for him.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping low. “Did you do the same for my father?”
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“I told you, so that you may make a decision about your future.”
I turned to face him, my lip quivering. “And what decision is that?”
His mouth quirked, and he rubbed his lower lip. “Either you agree to be my wife, and give yourself to me in all the ways a wife gives herself to a husband, or, well…” With a shrug he swept his open hand over the yard. “This is where you may find yourself.”
“And what is my crime?”
Azriel chuckled, baring his venomous white teeth. “You are rather committed, aren't you? To playing the innocent.”
“I am innocent. ”
He frowned briefly. “I suppose no one would blame you really, not within themselves. A beautiful young woman like you, forced into marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather?” He reached out, and stroked my veiled cheek with the back of his finger.
“People would understand, and even pity you. But that pity would not save your life. You would be punished all the same, made an example of.”
I sniffled, trying to fill my lungs with breath even though I could not manage to breathe properly. “What are you accusing me of? What is it you think I’ve done?”
“I saw you, Evie. In the moonlight.” He placed his hand over mine, clutched still in my lap, and leaned close to my ear. “ Just go to sleep, old man. Then it will all be over. ”
What little air remained in my body rushed out of me, and I shook my head frantically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a filthy coward who hated your father. You probably killed him.”
“Me?” He sniggered into my ear.
“Yes,” I hissed through my tears. “You come back unexpectedly, and he dies? Suddenly? He was in perfect health, and then you show up.” I met his eyes and gritted my teeth. “It was you. You killed him for his money, and now you’re trying to blame me.”
He leaned back in his chair, hand outstretched on his cane, and he grinned. “Is that the game you’re going to play, beloved?”
“I am not playing games, you are, you filthy swine.” I rose to my feet, surprised I was able to stand at all. “Now take me from this place. This is what you had me break my mourning for? For this? You are the devil, Azriel Caine.”
He laughed softly, rising to his feet and offering his arm. “Come then, let me take you home.”
I took his arm only because I was unsure how far I could trust my own legs, and indeed I was unsure that I would not yet faint. I almost clung to him as we hurried down the stairs and through the once again crowded lane way, and out onto the street.
The rain was falling heavily, and we were soaked when we reached the carriage.
I pulled up my veil once the carriage began to move, and wiped away the rain and my tears with a handkerchief.
“You’re not crying for Hendridge.” Azriel said softly. “You weren’t praying for him, either.”
“I was.” I held a hand to my mouth, shaking my head. “It was vile, all those people, cheering on his death, like it was a show in the West End.”
“Yes, but you still weren’t crying for him.”
I looked up at him, and he ran a hand through his dark hair.
“I saw a man who deserved to have one person who believed in his salvation.”
“You saw yourself, a woman judged for a crime she felt was justified.” He tilted his head and smiled. “You would not want people cheering for your death, but believe me, they would. Like any other poor soul dragged up on to those gallows.”
“Poor soul?” I scoffed. “You call him a poor soul, and yet would see me hang, and suffer, and die? You hate me that much?”
He frowned, and shook his head. “Heavens no. Beloved, you misunderstand me.” He shuffled to the edge of his seat, and reached out to take my hand, holding fast as I tried to yank it away. “I do not do this to hurt you, Evie. Merely to motivate you.”
“Motivate me? To be your whore?”
His eyes dropped to my lips. “I told you. To be my wife.”
“Even if I could be convinced to take a man like you as my husband, I am not permitted to marry, you fool.” I laughed harshly. “Your plan, your idiotic plan and your false accusations will lead you nowhere. I am a widow, as you damned well know.”
He launched himself at me, his hands slamming into the carriage wall either side of me and caging me in, his eyes wild.
“If you think anything would keep me from possessing you, you are sorely mistaken.”
“Get away from me.” I shrunk in on myself, but he seized my jaw in his hand.
“Society, God, the church, whatever force you think will keep us apart, I will tear them all to the fucking ground, do you hear me?”
“Let go of me!” I tried to shove him away, but he pressed himself harder against me, his mouth far too close to mine. I tried desperately to turn my head, crying out as his teeth raked against my jawline.
“You’re mine, Evie,” he growled.
“I’m not yours!” I slapped at his face, hardly landing a blow. “I would rather hang!”
He grabbed my hair in his other hand, forcing my head back painfully, leering down at me. “Would you, Evie? Because it can be arranged.”
“You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you, you filthy, vile monster!”
“Enjoy it?” He pressed his open mouth to my cheek. “Oh no, I can think of much better uses for this perfect body of yours than a corpse dangling at the end of a rope.”
I cried out, writhing under him and trying to buck him off as he ground himself against me.
But as suddenly as he had thrown himself at me, he backed away, panting as he settled back into his side of the carriage. He laughed, rubbing his chin and looking me up and down.
“I was right about you, that spark inside you. ”
“You ratbag bastard,” I spat at him, frantically trying to arrange my clothes and my hair. “How dare you touch me like this.”
“I think you rather like it, beloved.” He smirked, rolling the cane back and forth between his fingers. “I think a woman like you would love to be pinned down and used. The very thought of it has that cunt of yours dripping for me, doesn’t it?”
I covered my face with my hands and gasped. “My god, you are a degenerate.”
“I know you don’t want to hang, Evie, no matter how easily those words passed your lips just now. I know you want to live.”
My hands dropped from my face, and I regarded him through a mist of humiliated tears.
“And I know that will to live is what will drive you to me.”
“That’s what you think,” I hissed, and the carriage came to a stop. “I will never be convinced to be your wife.”
He got to his feet, leaning into my face. “Then make ready your prayers, stepmother.” He moved past me, jumping down from the carriage and striding towards the house, leaving the footman to help me down.