Page 2 of Provoked

The men beside David kept talking, oblivious. Angry, he shot them a disapproving glance, and one of them noticed, a burly man with a pockmarked face. He gave David a long, ugly look and elbowed his neighbour to draw his attention. The second man listened to what the first had to say, his bleary, hostile gaze fixed on David.

David turned away, tamping down the sudden flare of rage that threatened to overcome the fear squatting in his gut. An urge to strike out—to just throw himself into a brawl he could never ever win—assailed him. He had to bite the inside of his cheek and tighten his fists till he thought his knuckles would split to get control of himself. He was here for one reason only: to witness James’s and Andrew’s deaths. To show them they would be remembered.

If Jeffrey knew David was here, he’d have a fit. He’d advised the younger man against taking the radicals’ case at all, pointing out that it was one thing for Jeffrey to defend men who had taken up arms against the government, it was quite another for David Lauriston—the son of a tenant farmer from Fife with scarce four years as an advocate to his name—to join him. But David had taken the case anyway, realising his ambition to work with the great man. And it had brought him here today.

It was Hardie’s turn to speak now, and he stepped forward. The first part of what he said was drowned out, but David heard his final words.

“—in a few minutes, our blood shall be shed on this scaffold,” Hardie cried, “our heads severed from our bodies for no other sin than seeking the legitimate rights of our ill-used and downtrodden countrymen—”

Shouts of encouragement from the crowd echoed all around at his words. The sheriff surged forward to place a restraining hand on Hardie’s arm.

“Stop this violent and improper language, Mr. Hardie!” he demanded. He was almost purple with anger. “You promised not to inflame the crowd!”

The spectators protested loudly at this silencing of the prisoner.

“Let him speak!” someone cried.

Hardie shrugged MacDonald’s hand off, declaring angrily, “We said what we intended to say, whether you granted us liberty to do so or not.”

A loud cheer greeted this, and it seemed to draw Hardie’s attention to the throng of spectators. He looked about himself. Out at the crowd, then up at the gibbet above his head. At the block beside him, readied for his own beheading, then out at the crowd again. At the people grouped in the square to witness his death, all hemmed in by countless redcoats. Everywhere there was the scarlet of dress uniforms, the glint of weapons, the quiver of nervous horseflesh. David watched as the condemned man took it all in, and saw the potential of what might happen here today.

Hardie held up his hand and spoke one last time. “Do not drink any toasts to us tonight, friends.” His voice rang out clearly, but his tone was sombre as he eyed the soldiers. “Leave the public houses behind. Go to your homes. Attend to your bibles this night.” Beside him, James Baird nodded his agreement.

The crowd murmured unhappily, and the sheriff stepped forward again, drawing the two men into a final discussion, this time speaking too low to be heard. At the end of it, one of the redcoats was summoned forward. He took out a knife from his belt and cut the bonds that held the condemned men’s wrists.

They shook off the ropes then, giving each other one last look before coming together in a tight embrace, Baird resting his forehead against Hardie’s shoulder for one long moment before they parted.

“Look at them,” one of the men beside David jeered. “They’re like a pair o’ women.”

David bit his cheek till he tasted blood to stop himself from turning on the man. A woman in front of him was less controlled. She turned and hissed that they were a bunch of ignorant bastards. They told her to shut her face with the sort of good humour that could turn vicious in the blink of an eye. David didn’t even look at them—he fixed his attention where it needed to be. On the scaffold.

The prisoners stood back to back, two proud, upright figures, while the hangman stepped forward to settle the nooses about their necks and black hoods over their heads. Hardie held a white handkerchief in his left hand. The hangman’s signal.

For a few moments they remained thus, and the crowd seemed to hold its collective breath. Even the drunks were silent now. The condemned men groped for each other’s hands, linking their fingers together in a final gesture of solidarity. The handkerchief dropped.

So did the men.

David kept his gaze on their linked hands. In that first instant it seemed to him that their fingers tightened. Gradually though, the connection loosened. Their kicking legs stilled, bodies growing limp, hands parting. Souls leaving. He knew, somehow, the precise moment at which they ceased to inhabit their bodies. And then they merely hung there, dead. Two carcasses.

A woman wailed.

“Shame!” someone else cried wildly and the cry was taken up by the crowd.Shame! Shame! Murder!

The cries went on and on, and the redcoats around the square began to look twitchy, their weapons quivering with readiness. The men and women that David stood among hung on the cusp of transforming into a mob—all it would take, David thought, was one rash gesture, one thrown stone, and this could be another Peterloo.

Diversion came in the form of two large men stepping forward to cut down the bodies. Gradually, the cries began to die away as the crowd strained forward, waiting for the next stage in the proceedings. The headsman.

They settled Hardie’s body on the block first, and the headsman stepped forward. He looked surprisingly small, slight even. A spectator had claimed earlier that this was the same man who’d beheaded the body of James Wilson, another of the radicals, a week earlier. A medical student, the spectator had claimed, skilled in dissection.

When the headsman lifted the axe, an agonised cry from someone in the crowd fractured the silence. Perhaps it put him off. Or perhaps it was inexperience—it wasn’t as though there was much call for headsmen these days, after all. Whatever the case, it took him three blows to remove Hardie’s head and two for Baird’s. After each operation, he held up the head, gore dripping gruesomely from the neck, and declared, “This is the head of a traitor!” And each time, the spectators howled, like a great beast bellowing, half in pain, half in protest.

A group of men moved onto the scaffold then, to lift the bodies into coffins and load them onto a wagon for removal.

There was nothing left for the crowd to witness now, other than the inevitable clearing up. Halfway through the operation, the bored spectators began to disperse. It happened more peaceably than David could’ve imagined possible, as though when the headsman struck with his axe, he’d struck at the incipient mob amongst them.

Even the drunken fools beside David who’d been thrumming with barely suppressed violence throughout the whole proceedings had finally subsided. They turned from the scaffold with deadened expressions, calm now, and melted away with the rest of the departing crowd.

David waited, though. He waited for the wagon to be loaded up, then watched it slowly trundle away, rattling over uneven cobbles. Still he waited. Till the wagon was completely out of sight. Until James and Andrew were gone forever.