Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

too high to see out of, and where the bed was a mere bench.

— Well, look here! Barbet said. Here’s more whitewash ruined.

A whole wall was drawn over with a maze. It was a Troy Town or garden path that doubles and doubles on itself, but far more confused.

Monsieur Hugo followed some of it with his finger, and laughed.

— I suppose these buggers have no reason to feel that they should be considerate of my walls, Barbet said.

— No! Monsieur Hugo said, brightening his face into a glorious grin. But no, never, none whatsoever!

I had never seen him so merry. Barbet laughed too, God knows why. Hugo clapped him on the shoulder, laughing the harder. Then he put his hands deep in his pockets and his beard on his chest, a characteristic way of walking along for him. I’ve noticed it often. Suddenly he looked up at me with utter mischief on his face, like Mr. Punch.

Of the seven cells in this wing of the prison one is fitted out as a chapel. It has a wooden chair in a corner for the minister and several rows of backless benches for the worshipers, with hymnals and tracts arranged upon them neatly.

With the largest of his keys Barbet opened a stoutly barred door and let us into an oblong court as bare of any object as an empty box. On three sides, high walls. The fourth side was the other half of the prison. Its narrow windows had panes, with white bars behind the glass.

It had begun to rain. We could see the branches of a tree in the sheriff’s garden beyond the wall, fog caught in them like lambswool. Barbet coughed and rocked on his heels, making his coat swing like a bell.

The jailor Pearce, whose sister is one of Polly’s cronies, came into the court, bringing with him a young man of good build.

— On his way, Barbet said, to ten years in Botany Bay, for theft.

He wore canvas trousers, a wool jacket, and a cap with a long bill. Pearce gave us good morning. Voices in that empty court sounded as hollow as across a field. The young man did not look at us.

Barbet took us to a kind of shed, without windows, that had been built onto the back of the prison. In here was the gallows.

— There are, as you may count, thirteen steps up. The condemned stands there, on that trap, and drops through when that bar is slid away. I think we might do it with more courage if the executions were still in the old way, in front of the prison, with a crowd to watch and cheer, and with the charges read in a strong voice before the drop.

— Tapner now, as you’ve come to hear about him, was wondrous calm, careless you might say, in his last days. Look here.

Barbet took a daguerreotype from his pocket.

— This was made just before he was hanged. We had the man with his apparatus into the cell. There was, as you can see, a good light. Look at that broad grin.

It was, indeed, the picture of a man pleased with himself.

— I fair had to shout at him, don’t smile! You must look serious in your picture. You are about to stand in judgment before your Maker. You would think it was a thing impossible, but he kept to his smile. He said it was well known that one should always smile when having one’s likeness taken.

— He was a kind of gentleman, you know. He worked at a government post until gin and pilfering got the better of his character.

— He was young, Monsieur Hugo said.

— He lived with two women, sisters, married to one, the lover of the other. He was of a Woolwich family, honest people they said at the trial. His father was a religious man. When the wife came for a last visit, she was heartbroken. She knew all about his carryings on with her sister. She forgave him all. The murder too, I suppose. These people are shocking.

— Before he was hanged, Tapner was presented with a prayer book by the minister. Read that if you are guilty, the minister said. I am not guilty, Tapner said. Read those prayers anyway. We are all sinners. An hour later the minister found Tapner reading the book, water standing in his eyes.

— Tapner had insured his life for five-hundred pound, the premiums for which took his whole income. He ran his household with what he could steal.

— And did the insurance company pay up? Monsieur Hugo asked.

— Of course not.

— Not even the premiums?

— Oh no! It would have been a scandal to do that.

— See how virtuously an insurance company can rob a widow, Monsieur Hugo said. It seems the genius of this century is that it can find a good reason for anything. Did Tapner know about my letter to Palmerston?

— Oh yes, Barbet said. And he was very grateful. He felt that it was a large thing for you to do. He knew that it was useless, of course. Justice is justice.

— The tenth of February he was hanged. He was thirty-one. In all our years of hangings we had always paraded the condemned through the streets, by the school, down the High Street, and through the market. Six soldiers went before, rolling drums in a slow march, and the Queen’s man brought the mace behind. We had not had a hanging for a full twenty-five years. Times change, as they say. It did not seem modern to walk him around the town, the rope already fitted to his neck. So Tapner was hanged privately here, in this dark place. For I am the resurrection and the life were the last words he heard. He himself had nothing at all to say. His shirt was wet with a cold sweat when we tied on the hood, and his eyes were those of a suffering animal.

Monsieur Hugo placed