Sebastian said, “Any chance Jarvis could be behind this?”
Sebastian might not know the cause of the animosity between the two men, but he knew it ran deep and deadly. Thus far, Yates had managed to survive the enmity of the King’s powerful cousin only because he had in his possession evidence that would destroy Jarvis if it ever came to light. What that evidence was, Sebastian had never discovered. But because of it, the two men lived in an uneasy state of check, neither able to make a move to destroy the other without destroying himself.
It was a situation that Sebastian suspected could not persist indefinitely. And although it troubled him to admit it, if Sebastian were a betting man, he would put his money on Jarvis.
Yates said, “The last thing Jarvis wants is to see me hanged. He knows the consequences.”
“So I would have thought. In which case the question then becomes, why isn’t he doing something to prevent it?” If anyone had the power to see the charges against Yates dropped, it was the King’s Machiavellian cousin.
But Yates only shook his head and shrugged, as if the answer escaped him.
Pushing his way back through the prison’s crowded Press Yard and labyrinth of corridors, Sebastian found he had to close his mind to the sea of pale, desperate faces, to the endless, plaintive chorus of, “Have pity on poor little Jack!” and “Gov’nor, can ye spare a farthing? Only a farthing!”
Once, just twenty months before, he had found himself in much the same desperate position as Russell Yates. Accused of murder, he’d chosen the life of a fugitive in a desperate attempt to catch a twisted killer and clear his own name. Sebastian knew only too well how British “justice” worked.
Yates’s chances of being declared innocent were slim.
The heavy, ironbound main door of the prison slammed shut behind him, and Sebastian paused on the pavement outside to suck a breath of clean air deep into his lungs. All the turmoil of the street known as the Old Bailey swirled around him: Axles creaked as wagon drivers cursed and whipped their teams; a pie man shouted, “Fresh and hot. Hot! Hot!” The scent of ale wafted from a nearby tavern. And still the smell of the prison seemed to cling to him, a foul, oily stench of decay, hopelessness, and looming death.
The relentless pounding of hammers drew his attention to the spot outside the Debtors’ Door where a crew of workmen were knocking together the scaffold and viewing platform that would be used for the execution of two highwaymen scheduled for tomorrow morning. Until recently, London had hung her condemned prisoners at Tyburn, to the west of the city, with the doomed men, women, and children drawn through the streets in open carts surrounded by a raucous, drunken mob. But as the fields around Hyde Park filled with the elegant homes of the wealthy, Mayfair’s aristocratic inhabitants took exception to that endless, malodorous parade. And so the exhibition was shifted here, to the street outside Newgate Prison. Sebastian had heard that when a notorious murderer—or a woman—was hanged, choice viewing spots at the windows of the surrounding buildings could rent for as much as two or three guineas.
Someone with Russell Yates’s colorful background could easily attract a crowd of twenty thousand or more.
Sebastian became aware of Tom sitting motionless on the curricle’s high seat, his solemn gaze on a workman who was climbing up on the platform to lever into place a stout beam studded with massive iron hooks. Tom’s own brother had been hanged here for theft at the age of just thirteen.
It had been Sebastian’s intention to drive to St. Botolph-Aldgate and take a look at the scene of Mr. Daniel Eisler’s murder. But he was suddenly aware of a profound exhaustion he saw mirrored in his tiger’s face, of his rumpled clothing and day’s growth of beard, and of the need to offer his condolences to the grieving widow of an old friend.
He ran a hand down the nearest chestnut’s sweat-darkened neck and told Tom, “Go home, see the chestnuts put up, and then take the day off to rest.”
Tom’s face fell. “Ne’er tell me ye’ll be takin’ a hackney?” That peerless arbiter of taste and deportment, Beau Brummell himself, had decreed that no gentleman should ever be seen riding in a hackney carriage, and Tom had taken the Beau’s strictures to heart.
“I am indeed. To drive this pair back out to Kensington again, after all they’ve been through, would be beyond cruel.”
“Aye, but . . . gov’nor. A hackney?”
Sebastian laughed and turned away.