Page 20 of My One and Only Duke
“Bloody crime,” Davies replied from beside him, “when no writ of transportation shows up for such as him. Every other cove who’s committed the same offense gets transportation. He gets the noose.”
Ned wanted to mash his face against Davies’s skinny ribs and howl. Instead he mashed his fist against Davies’s arm. “Stop crowding me.”
Davies tousled his hair, and Ned was so enraged he didn’t bother hitting him again.
“This is wrong,” Ned muttered, turning back to the barred window. “He’s not a killer, not like them other poor sods.”
The condemned were usually kept segregated in miserable conditions in the prison’s bowels. Had Mr. Wentworth been confined thus, Ned would be dead.
“Don’t watch, Neddy. He’ll be just as dead if you stand guard over his things. I’ll stay here.”
“Nobody will dare steal his clothes. He left them to us, and he made sure everybody including the wardens knew that.” Which made no sense. “If he could bribe the wardens not to steal his clothes, why couldn’t he leg it, Davies?”
The guards formed a circle around Mr. Wentworth as the right shackle came off. The courtyard was drenched with early morning sun, an obscenity given what the new day held for Quinn Wentworth. The Ordinary had been sent for first thing to say prayers for him, another obscenity, for the Thou Shalt Not Kill man to ease the king’s conscience about taking a life.
“He’s not stupid, Neddy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The left shackle was proving stubborn, which was bad and good. Mr. Wentworth couldn’t bolt until it was off, but they wouldn’t hang him in chains either.
“Think about it,” Davies said, gaze on the scene in the courtyard. “Quinn Wentworth is as rich as Fat George, but he’s not a lord, not Quality. Penny’s solicitor friend was at the trial. He said the physician was lying through his teeth, the witnesses were all familiars. Somebody wanted Quinn Wentworth put in jail, and that same somebody saw to it that his sentence wasn’t commuted to transportation.”
Almost everybody condemned to die, even the typical manslaughterer, got a commutation. Execution was usually reserved for an outright murderer or a counterfeiter. Familiars—witnesses whom the court knew from frequent testimony—were on the take or had agreed to testify lest they be charged with a crime themselves.
“Half the nobs must owe him money,” Ned said, as the damned shackle gave way.
“They’ll still owe that money when he’s dead. Somebody hates him, worse than the Quality hate the rest of us anyway.”
An argument rose in the courtyard, between the guards and the executioner. Nobody had thought to bring out a white hood to place over the condemned man’s head.
“They even muck up a damned killing,” Ned said.
“They know he’s innocent. Even that lot know they’re doing the devil’s work today.”
“They know he’s innocent,” Ned muttered, “we know he’s innocent, and he knows he’s innocent, so why didn’t he just buy his way onto a ship?”
Davies was innocent. Ned could smell it on him, smell the stalwart bewilderment of one who’d been caught up in the crooked, stupid net of the king’s justice. Bewilderment was all that stood between Davies and the despair that made a good man give up on goodness altogether. His own, and anybody else’s too.
Mr. Wentworth wasn’t innocent in the same way, but he hadn’t killed anybody. Ned could smell that too.
“I have a theory,” Davies said. “He’s innocent, but somebody wanted him hanged—the worst death there is, much worse than a knife in an alley. If somebody is powerful enough to make that happen, despite Mr. Wentworth’s fortune, they’re powerful enough to go after his family. He has sisters and a little brother, a business partner. If Wentworth were to bolt, or get a commutation to transportation, what would happen to that lot?”
One of the guards trotted off to fetch the damned hood. Mr. Wentworth was smiling as his hands were bound.
Smiling.
“I used to want to be like him,” Ned said. “I’ll never be like him. What if your theory is wrong? What if whoever put him in here will go after his family next?”
“If they’re his family, they’ll be careful. He will have warned them and put protections in place. He’s gambling with his life that they’ll be careful enough, and that this is personal.”
“You think he knows who did this to him?”
The guard who’d gone for the hood lumbered across the gravel, a scrap of white cloth in his hand. Mr. Wentworth’s hands were secured with a yank to the rope, and the hood was placed over his head.
“He knows or suspects who’s done this to him. Don’t watch, Neddy.”
Ned couldn’t watch and he couldn’t look away. “I was starving when he got here, Davies. I wasn’t hungry anymore, hadn’t been hungry for days. I was seeing things that wasn’t there. He made me eat. Made me take a bite of meat, and when that stayed down, two bites. Nothing but meat and eggs at first, and plain, weak tea. Like he knew what it was to starve.”
