The System of the World

The Press-Yard, Newgate Prison

TEN MINUTES LATER they are down in the Press-Yard, just off Phoenix Court. It is called a Yard but is really nothing more than a fortified alley. A short caravan is drawn up there, waiting to convey them all to Tyburn: a wagon containing various tools of Mr. Ketch’s trade; a spacious open cart, already loaded with empty coffins; and, drawing up the rear, a sledge. The cart is for most of the condemnees, for Ketch, and for the Ordinary. The sledge is reserved for Shaftoe, it being the tradition that a traitor be dragged to his death facing backwards. Mere hanging is too good for such a vile person, wheels are too nice.

As the condemnees progress from each stage to the next, their entourage grows. Here in the Press-Yard there must be two score men, mostly gaolers with cudgels, but a few constables as well. Jack’s beginning to see blunderbusses. A sort of corridor is formed, tending to funnel them straight to the big cart. The other prisoners clamber up and sit down, using coffin-lids as benches. Jack is directed to his wheelless land-barge, which has a plank to sit on, but no coffin; by the end of the day, a coffin, or indeed any other container, will be quite wasted on him.

Mr. Ketch, who is nothing if not organized, opens one of the several lockers on his supply-wagon, and pulls out several lengths of rope. Each of them has a hangman’s noose in one end. He tosses all but one of them into the big cart, then circles around to the rear where he addresses Jack.

“It’s a fine one, eh?” he exclaims, holding up the noose.

“If you were not wearing a black hood you’d be glowing with pride, Mr. Ketch. But I do not know why.”

“This rope I got from a pirate-captain I hanged last year.”

“He supplied his own rope?”

“Indeed. A hawser, he called it. Look at the thickness of it.”

“He wanted to be sure the rope would not break? That seems very odd to me.”

“No, no, I’ll show you!” And Ketch steps round to Shaftoe’s left side and fits the noose over the latter’s head. The rope is so thick and stiff, the noose so tight, that it can barely close around Shaftoe’s throat. But the knot lodges under his left ear like a great bony fist. “Feel that leverage-now you’ll take my meaning, sir!” Ketch says, pulling up once or twice on the loose end of the rope. Each time he does, the knot, bearing on the heel of Shaftoe’s skull, crowbars his entire head forward and to one side. “And look at the length of it!” Shaftoe turns to see that Ketch has retreated to a distance of some two fathoms, but still has not run out of rope. “With this I can give you a drop such as few men are afforded, Mr. Shaftoe, very few. By the time you get to the end of this rope you’ll be moving as fast as a cannonball. You’ll be smoking a pipe in Heaven long before I chop off your testicles and shovel your guts out; and the quartering will mean as little to you, as coffin-worms to a dead bishop.”

“You are a princely fellow, Mr. Ketch, and Betty is fortunate to have you.”

“Mr. Shaftoe,” says Jack Ketch in a lower voice, stepping up very close to him now, and absent-mindedly wrapping the loose rope into a neat coil, “I shan’t have leisure to exchange words with you again, until we are standing beneath the Tree. For I’ve other prisoners to tend to, as you can see, and the journey to Tyburn promises to be, er…”

“Festive?”

“I was going to say ‘eventful,’ not wanting to show disrespect. I’ll be in the cart. We shall not be able to hear each other. Since you’re facing backwards, we shall not be able to see each other. Even when we are face to face beneath the Tree, the noise will be such that we’ll not be able to exchange a word, though we scream in each other’s ears. So I say to you now, sir, thank you! Thank you! And know that you shall feel less pain today than a man who bangs his head on a door-frame in a dark room.”

“In the way of pain, I ask for nothing more nor less than what I deserve,” says Shaftoe, “and I shall entrust you, Mr. Ketch, with that determination.”

“And I shall prove worthy of that trust sir! Farewell!” says Jack Ketch. He turns his back on Shaftoe as if he’s afraid he might cry again. He straightens his back, works on his composure, smooths down his hood, and steps up into the cart, where he has other clients waiting.