challenging these beliefs, we would never find out how rooted they really are,” he said.
“Indeed not.” Like testing the water, she thought. You can’t tell just by looking at it. Horace Stanton would always hesitate too long before even putting one of his toes in. Not like Erasmus. She thought of him as he had been in the court, that epic tale of pursuit and capture, the spirit of justice and the desire for revenge confused together. Mixed motives, even if this was not fully confessed. But Erasmus was a man of action—he would never hesitate, never hold back. Suddenly, and with a vividness that caught at her breathing, she pictured him standing at the brink, braced for the plunge.
26
In contrast to the custom at Tyburn, there were no fixed hanging days at Execution Dock, where those found guilty of crimes at sea under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty were taken to pay their last dues. Within a week of the death sentence being delivered, Barber and Calley and Libby and Rimmer and Lees were led out from Newgate Prison and found the cart waiting for them in the yard outside, together with a great crowd of people who had come to follow the procession and see the hangings. The men would have been brought out earlier even than this, but the hangings by tradition took place in the mornings, on the foreshore of the river, and they had to wait four days for a low tide at the right time of the morning so as to remain on ground that lay within Admiralty jurisdiction.
Calley, who was the strongest of them in body but childlike in mind, began to weep when he saw the cart, and Barber, who had sometimes protected him from ill usage by Libby and one or two others aboard the slave ship, though hindered now by his bonds, contrived to put a hand on Calley’s shoulder as they walked to the cart and climbed up onto the platform that had been raised there, several feet high, so as to give the spectators a clear view of the condemned men. Here they took their places, sitting together side by side on the narrow bench. On a bench behind them, already waiting, were the executioner and his two assistants.
Erasmus Kemp was not among those who saw them emerge, nor was he stationed anywhere along the route or waiting at the place of execution. He had no smallest desire to witness the sufferings of the condemned men, even avoiding—as far as he could—any picturing of the hangings. The sentence was fitting, it had met the needs of justice and retribution, it had recognized his rights and those of his dead father. But all this was an abstraction to him, like drawing a line in some cosmic ledger. It was necessary too that there should be a measure of pain in the punishment, but he could take no pleasure in the thought of this. The sort of cruelty or vindictiveness that might have given gratification to another in the witnessing of such pain, or even in the knowledge of it, formed no part of his nature.
The cart moved off from the prison, turning into Newgate Street, passing St. Paul’s and proceeding down Cheapside toward Cornhill. Ahead of it, riding at a slow pace, were the Marshal of the Admiralty and the deputy Marshal, who bore the silver mace—the same that had lain on the table before the judges—over his shoulder. They were followed by two city marshals and a number of Sheriff’s officers. The whole cavalcade was conducted with great solemnity and with no sound but the horses’ hooves on the cobbles.
This stateliness was in marked contrast to the hubbub of the crowd thronging round the cart. The case had aroused a great deal of public interest. Hangings at Execution Dock were relatively rare; there had been only one so far that year, for a murder committed at sea. Commercial Road was lined with people and resounded with shouts of greeting, jovial witticisms as to the condemned men’s impending fate and the shrill sound of tin whistles that were being sold to children along the way. Rimmer—he who had dealt Captain Thurso his death blow—was the only one to show defiance, shouting insults at the people as the cart passed.
Hughes had positioned himself among the crowd in the yard of the Turk’s Head in Wapping. From here there was a public right of way that led down to the river