TAUNTON, SOMERSET, AUTUMN 1685
It seemed as if everyone in Taunton was gathered in the market square, where one iron cage held the slumped body of the innocent tailor and the other, Monmouth’s unrepentant captain. The gibbet was still standing: today would be another day of execution for the prisoners sentenced to death. Smoke from the furze fires under the kettles of pitch for preserving body parts for display drifted a sulfurous smell across the marketplace. Judge Jeffreys had already left the town for Windsor, to report to the king that good work had been done in the heartlands of the Monmouth rebellion, and that the Bloody Assize would go on—like a murderous traveling show—to the other towns of the west country.
The Taunton town crier stood on the step of the gibbet so that he could be seen over the heads of the crowd, and heard at the farthest corner of the marketplace. The mayor, scowling with distress, stood beside him.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the town crier called out. “All the following are to die by beheading as befits gentlemen.” He read out a short list of names. Johnnie skirted the marketplace to get closer to the gibbet so that he could hear.
“All the following are to die by hanging, drawing, and quartering, either here or at their towns or their villages as soon as may be conveniently performed.”
He read out eighteen names of local men into the stony silence.
“And the following have received the generous and gracious forgiveness of the king and are to be transported to the colonies as indentured servants for ten years.”
The town crier hammered the list into the post of the gibbet, bowed ceremoniously to the mayor, and strode away. Johnnie shouldered hisway through the crowd to get close enough to read the death list. His uncle’s name was not there. He scanned hundreds of names on the transportation list, jostled by families of the condemned men, and then finally, he found it, smudged and hard to see, but there it was: “Ned Ferryman.”
His first thought was that now he could go home, the bearer of terrible news. Ned would—once more—be exiled, far away, and he would certainly die in exile. Ten years’ service in Barbados would kill him as surely as the hangman in Taunton marketplace. Ned’s adventure and Johnnie’s search were both over.
He turned to go back to his inn, pushing his way through the crowd, ignoring the occasional plea of “Help me, sir! Save a prisoner!” when he felt a light touch on his fingers, almost as if a hand had been slipped into his and, turning around, he saw a gown of reddish brown, a shawl of gray. The woman’s face was completely hidden by the deep brim and wings of her sunbonnet.
“I can’t help you,” he said harshly, and then she raised her head so that he could see her face, deep inside the brim of the bonnet—it was Rowan.
He wanted to throw his jacket over her head to hide her from anyone who might recognize her—surely everyone could see the high cheekbones and the dark eyes? He wanted to drag her away from the marketplace so that she would not see the pecked face of the tailor and the skull coming through the face of the captain in their iron cages. But then he saw the steadiness of her gaze and realized that she could walk through horrors without flinching.
Another glance at her told him that she had worked some magic and made herself almost invisible, even to someone who knew her, even to someone who loved her and was looking for her. She could pass for any poor woman in this crowd with her hard-worn clothes and her skin as brown as a plowgirl’s. She could have walked past him every day and he would not have recognized her. Even her gait had changed: she shuffled in ill-fitting boots, her shoulders drooped as if she were used to the weight of the milkmaid’s yoke, and her head was bowed like all the women in this town, like a woman defeated by sorrow.
“Follow me.” He felt he was choking on the words, as he led the wayto his inn, through the front door, and up the stairs to his bedroom, unnoticed by the landlord, who was tapping another barrel of ale in the cellar.
Johnnie closed the door and turned to her. “I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”
As soon as the door shut she became herself again. Her head came up, her gaze was direct. “Is he on the list to die?”
“Were you with the army, Rowan? Were you seen with the army?”
“Is he listed to die?”
He saw that she would not speak of anything else until he answered her.
“No. Transported. Were you with the army?”
“Can you get him a pardon? He can’t go.”
“Were you seen with him?”
She made a little gesture with her hand. “I was his boy servant,” she said. “Nobody would recognize me in these clothes. As soon as we can get him out he must see a doctor. He was cracked in the head by a cannonball, he lay like a dead man for hours.”
“You were never at the battle?” he asked, horrified. “He didn’t take you into battle?”
“He lay like a dead man,” she repeated. “And when he came to, I couldn’t get him away. Will they forgive him, if you tell them how badly he is injured? Can you speak for him? D’you have money for a bribe?”
“You can’t bribe the judge.”
She laid hold of his jacket. “No, he’s gone already. You’d have to bribe the jailers. He can’t be transported, it will be the death of him.”
“I can’t bribe the jailers. I can’t break the law!”
“Then what did you come for?”
“For you!”