Will Starling by Ian Weir

Author:Ian Weir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Canadian Fiction, Canadian Author, Surgeons, Amputations, England, Historical Fiction, Grave Robbers, Dark Humour, Doomsday Men, Body Snatchers, Cadavers, Redemption, Literary Fiction, Death, Resurrection, ebook, kindle
ISBN: 9780864925718
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2014-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

There is a service for the condemned in the Newgate chapel, the day before the deed is done. The Condemned Pew is a black pen in the middle of the chapel, and the coffin is placed there beside the Guest of Honour to aid in disciplining the mind, cos who could say where idle thoughts might wander else, on this penultimate morning in the world. The Revd Dr Cotton the Prison Ordinary would preach a sermon upon the fires of everlasting torment that are ordained for those as die without a full confession of their sins and true repentance in their heart.

Meg on that Sunday morning was still refusing to confess, no matter how forcefully Dr Cotton implored, nor how hot the Fire was that he conjured up or how horrid the eternal suffocation. She sat through the sermon like a small fierce cornered animal and demanded afterwards to be taken back to the Press Rooms, where the condemned were allowed to spend their final days on earth. There were two of these, common wards with long tables and benches and narrow bunks and a fire at one end, separated from the rest of the gaol by the Press Yard: a flag-stoned courtyard, open to the sky, where in bygone times those prisoners who refused to enter a plea — wretches as hardened and obdurate as Meg Nancarrow — were stretched naked upon their backs and pressed to death with stones and iron weights. The Revd Dr Cotton began to despair of Meg’s immortal soul, and perhaps also of the sum he might otherwise raise by selling the details of her Last Dying Confession to the broadsheets, as the Newgate Ordinary was widely suspected of doing.

Shortly before noon, Meg was informed by a Keeper that the three Judges had met the evening previous to review her sentence, and had issued their decision: no mercy. She turned ashen upon receiving this news, and trembled violently. Some while later she was reported pacing in agitation, and at one o’clock she cried out to see the Prison Ordinary, saying that she wished to make her peace at last. The Revd Dr Cotton arrived with all haste. Rumours of a Confession were soon leaking out, and by three o’clock the first of the broadsheets was on the street.

I saw her an hour later. At the furthest end of the Press Yard was a double grating with a gap between, where the condemned could receive a visitor — each of them on one side of the grating, with a Turnkey between them in the vacant space. They’d brought her out in shackles.

“Why would you make such a confession?” I asked her, bewildered.

“Cos I did it, Will, just like I said. Harsh words was exchanged, and threats uttered.”

She was quoting the exact words I’d just read in the broadsheet that I’d purchased for two pennies from a hawker in Paternoster Square. The printed account was accompanied by a woodblock illustration of a woman in Olde Tyme Garb kneeling wretched at the headsman’s block.

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