Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part Three: 1826-1831

The Men of Enterprise

Chapter Nine

With a sense of unreality Mace listened to the judge's censorious voice droning on and on.

"I am bound to exclude from your mind any hope of earthly mercy, and must point your attention to that higher tribunal where the most wretched sinner may by repentance achieve salvation....Apply earnestly and immediately to the reverend gentleman who will be placed over you...."

Mace became aware of a girl's loud, uncontrolled sobbing. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Jess supporting his wife from the Hall. It wrenched at his heart; he could not bear that Vinnie should suffer.

The enormity of what had happened struck at him then. They were going to take him away from Vinnie. He would never see Crosstrees or the yard again Never work singing alongside the men on the scaffolding. Never see his flyer launched.

He was led from the Great Hall with the other prisoners, and bundled roughly into the gaoler's cart outside. All around him on the forecourt were grief-stricken women, held back from their menfolk by the Special Constables. He did not catch sight of Vinnie until too late, when he was already in the cart. He stretched his bound hands down to her, and she clasped them tightly, running alongside until Jessica pulled her away, in fear that she would be trampled by the crowd.

At the goal, he was placed alone in a condemned cell. The chaplain harassed him constantly, though Mace had neither interest nor belief in heavenly salvation. He did not want comfort in the Valley of the Shadow. He only wanted to live.

Tom came to the gaol three days after his conviction. Mace was shocked, his partner looked as though he had not slept since the trial.

"I've spoken to John Ekless," Tom said, pacing the length of the cell. "You're not to give up hope. Ekless has already saved two labourers from the gallows. If your sentence is commuted to transportation for life, we'll find a way to send Vinnie with you. And we've started a petition - I've been riding round the villages -"

"The judges think I'm Swing," said Mace.

"There's no such person, for Christ's sake! You've done nothing that deserves even transportation."

"I've been wondering if Wickham could somehow be made to confess."

"Confess to what? You wrote the petition, and that stupid bloody letter. You attacked him when Spirit was launched. You couldn't deny any of the words Wickham and Kitcher claimed you'd spoken. It was only the context that was twisted. How the hell is any of that going to save you?"

Mace sat on the edge of the hard bed, staring down at his clasped hands. After a moment he looked up at Tom, and said quietly, "I've got another three weeks. It's too long, just sitting and pacing and thinking. I'm not strong enough to die like this, mate."

Tom stood still, leaned against the wall. "We're partners," he said. "You're not going to hand. Damn it. I won't let it happen! I've written to the Duke, and Parke, and the Home Secretary -"

"Where's Vinnie?"

"Oh.....she wanted to come. Jess is bringing her tomorrow. I was hoping - I thought we might have good news for you both by then."

Mace knew that his attitude must seem defeatist to Tom, but for as long as he continued to hope and yearn for a reprieve, he could not face the prospect of imminent death with any degree of resignation. In sheer self-defence, he dared not be too optimistic; though after those initial, despairing days he managed to put on a brave front for his wife and sister.

Vinnie was allowed to visit him four times, under the gaoler's watchful eye. After the first occasion she was resolute, composed, determined to make the best of their time together, even while she clung to the hope that Mace would be transported after all. He was proud of her, and thought of her every minute. Tom brought him some paper and charcoal - with the gaoler's dubious consent - and after that he would draw for hour upon hour: portraits of Vinnie, and then of everyone at Crosstrees; even a sketch of the flyer surrounded by scaffolding and wooden platforms, with men laughing as they worked. Only the colours were missing, but he could imagine those.

In the New Year, his elder brother came to the prison. Obadiah was staying at Crosstrees. Having recently moved lodgings, he had just received a letter written by Jess a month ago, and had travelled at once from Deptford. The brothers had not met in ten years, and although Mace was glad that Obadiah had cared enough to travel seventy miles, the meeting was awkward, neither of them knowing what to say, and Mace was relieved when he did not come again.

Mace forbade Tom and Jess to bring their children to the gaol, and they agreed it would be too upsetting for the twins, and the air of the place unhealthy for Annis. As well as drawing materials, Tom had brought him decent clothes from home, while a small bribe gave him the chance of a wash now and then, but the building as a whole was still overcrowded with men awaiting transportation. The place was rank with the smell of ordure and sweat of fear.

Of the seven Hampshire men sentenced to hang for their part in the 'uprising', four were eventually reprieved.

Mace was not one of them. Tom received a letter from Mr Justice Parke, reiterating his summing up at the trial, and stating that while he appreciated the nobility of Tom's motives in attempting to save his brother-in-law, Mace Tandy had been instructed not to hope for earthly mercy, and - petitions notwithstanding - the decision of the judicial bench must stand.

Mace was not surprised. He grew impatient with the nagging chaplain; but by the evening prior to his execution, he had come to terms in his own way with the necessity of losing everyone and everything he loved so much.

Or so he believed - until, just after lamplighting, the warder admitted five visitors to the cell. Honor ran ahead of Vinnie, straight into his arms, and he bent his head over hers and held her tight.

"Why did you come?" he said brokenly. "Tom, you promised - "

"We wouldn't stay at home," Luke said. "Pa couldn't make us."

And Tom said softly, "I couldn't mate. How could I?"

Honor looked up, her face wet. "I can't bear it, Uncle Macey."

Tom stepped forward, drew his daughter gently away. "Hush now," he said. "No more of that talk."

Mace hugged his sister before turning to Vinnie, who stood silent, shedding no tears.

"My loveliest girl," he said.

She came to him, and for long moments they clung to one another. At last a shudder went through Vinnie. "If our baby had lived," she said, "I would have had something of you still."

Mace bowed his head, then with tortured gaiety he looked at each of the people who were more important to him than life.

"Do you think," he said, "that I'll be content to rot along with my bones in some old churchyard? Oh, don't say you'll ever think of me like that, Vinnie, love..... " He put his hands on either side of her head. "They can't kill the memories, can they? This is where I'll live - in your minds, all of you - and maybe your hearts for a while, if my luck holds. How's that for immortality, eh?"

Honor turned her face against Tom's chest and wept. Luke had an arm around his mother, he was nearly the same height as her now. He said, since his father could not speak, "The flyer's getting prettier every day. The men have been working at double speed. I think....I think sort of to make it up to you, for the things they didn't dare admit in court."

Mace did not know what he could say to comfort his family. Perhaps, after all, his own view of the truth would be enough.

"I'll tell you what to do," he said. "Ask Vaillant to take you out on the flyer, when there's a real forget-me-not sky and a stiff breeze blowing up the Solent, and the wave crests are white and curling. Seamen reckon, don't they, that birds that follow ships are the souls of drowned sailors. Maybe my soul will be the flyer. She's my share of eternity - her, and the new generation of yachts that you'll build, Tom, from her design."

Jessica shook her head, Vinnie said, speaking for them both, "It's not enough. She's not you."

He held her close, buried his face in her hair. Rosewater and lavender; the scent of her would be with him always - but always was only a night and a cold dawn. He shut his eyes against the treacherous tears. How could he let her go, knowing this was the last time he would ever feel her arms around him, or the warmth of her body against his?

The warder said from the doorway, not without compassion, "Hurry it up, Tandy, you're not allowed all night for farewells."

Blindly he held Vinnie from him, and embraced all his family in turn, even Luke who would not normally have suffered it. Seeing that Jess was near to breaking, he said laughing through his tears, "Give Annis a great smacking kiss for me - and Smudge too, if you can bear to do it."

"Oh, Macey" she said.

He came last to Tom, and the partners gripped each other in a brief and fierce embrace. Then Mace stood back, and lightly punched Tom's shoulder.

"We were a grand bloody team, weren't we, mate?" he said.

"Knew we would be. Don't the best exceptions....make the world go round?"

The brightness and promise of that summer of '26 seemed very long ago. Mace raised a crooked grin.

"Only in a perfect world," he said.

Their eyes locked in a silent, intense communication. Mace nodded. "Anything planned?" he asked.

"I will have. Trust me. He's mine."

Mace had seen his friend look like that only once before, on the night Tom had decided to confront Wickham in East Cowes.

"Take care, Elderfield," he said. "Look after everyone."

"Bet on it, Tandy."

None of them said a literal goodbye. The gaoler, tolerant but mindful of his duty, ushered the visitors with firmness from the cell. Mace had only time to kiss Vinnie once more before she was gone.

The door was shut. The key rattled in the lock.

Stooping, he chose a portrait of Vinnie from the pile of sketches beside his bed. Then he lay down on the hard, thin mattress, and propped the sheet of paper upright against the wall a few inches from his head.

He gazed at her until the gaoler returned to extinguish the lamp, leaving him only darkness and memories to help him through the long night.

The winter morning dawned greyly. The chaplain came, to make a final, earnest effort to redeem Mace's soul. Mace had not time for such irrelevancies. Refusing the offered prayer book, he held the sketch of Vinnie, while a warder bound his hands, and was permitted to take it with him from the cell.

It was almost eight o'clock. The other two condemned men were steered ahead of him to the back of the gaol, where the raised platform of the portable scaffold overlooked the prison yard and the shabby dwellings of Staple Gardens. It seemed that most of the convicted rioters had gathered to watch the executions from the yard. In the alleys and green areas beyond the wall, a hushed and shuffling crowd was still growing.

The first condemned man to mount the steps to the scaffold was hardly more that a boy. He was to die for aiming an unsuccessful blow at the head of an MP, who had captured one of his friends. By no means all of the marches had been peaceful. The youth was dressed in rags, and sobbed loudly with terror while the noose was tied around his neck. Only when the trapdoor swung open and his feet dropped into air, did his cries choke gradually to silence. The hangman as usual suspended his own weight from the body of the dying boy, to end his suffering as quickly as possible; but it was ten minutes before the corpse ceased to twitch.

Mace had resolved to be calm and show no fear, but the boy's lingering agony struck him cold to the heart. His mouth was parched; he trembled in every limb. A sideways glance showed him the face of Cooper, the other condemned man, bent over the chaplain's prayer book in desperate concentration. An awed hush lay over the yard and beyond the walls, there would be no cheers raised for these executions.

A breeze eddied about Mace; he thought it came from the south. Hew smelled the odours of the city and the prison; sweat and woodsmoke and baking bread. Through them came a different scent; faint, half-imagined, drifting on the sighing wind. Rosewater and lavender.

The he knew - and though he had no faith in an afterlife as the chaplain understood it, he whispered, "Vinnie," with more love than reproach.

When his turn came, he climbed the steps with a determined tread, and did not flinch from the feel of the rope around his neck.

By the time the trapdoor fell away beneath his feet, he was no longer afraid.

Vinnie often woke early, before the household was astir; but that night she had not slept. Jess had been with her until an hour ago, and had left only when Vinnie insisted with composure, that she would prefer to be alone to rest for a while.

They would not leave her undisturbed for long, she knew that. Some member of the family would return well before eight o'clock.

On the dressing chest, a clock ticked sombrely. Nearly half past seven. The pink walls glowed with the dawn, for Vinnie did not care for closed curtains. The bed felt cold on the side where Mace should have lain.

She rose quietly and looked down from the window. The warm light in the room had been deceptive, and the sky was grey. The flowing river was edged with ice. Vinnie could see, through the naked trees, the place on the bank where she and Mace had taken their gypsy wedding vows.

"To go where thou goest," she murmured, "live wherever thou livest...."

On the slipway the flyer stood proudly, near completion, the beauty of her lines visible even through the network of scaffolding.

"To share with thee all things......"

Vinnie put on her best blue skirt and embroidered bodice, and tied the scarlet cravat - Mace's first gift to her - in her hair. She ran lightfooted down the stairs, and grimaced at the creaking of the front door as she opened it.

The boatyard was quite deserted. No one challenged her, nor called from the windows of Crosstrees as she approached the high dark, looming hull of the new yacht. She stood for a minute gazing up at the poles and platforms that surrounded the flyer.

"All things, Macey," she whispered, "until the day of my death."

Vinnie had climbed the scaffolding before. It was not difficult for a young and supple girl. Gaining the horizontal pole above the lowest platform, she stood up straight, holding on with one hand.

A breath of icy wind made her shiver, as she untied the long cravat from her hair and knotted one end securely around the next pole above her, and the other end around her neck.

She turned her face towards the north, and Winchester. Then with neither hesitation nor fear she let her feet drop from the lower pole.

She had been dead some minutes when Jessica found her.

Part 3, The Men of Enterprise, Chapter 10

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