The Strange Adventures of H Read online

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  Contents © Sarah Burton 2020

  The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  Print ISBN 978-1-78955-1-266

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-78955-1-273

  Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd

  Cover design by Sarah Whittaker | www.whittakerbookdesign.com

  All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Sarah Burton was the Course Director of Cambridge University’s MSt in Creative Writing. She has published non-fiction, children’s fiction, short stories and reviews for The Times, The Spectator, The Guardian and The Independent. The Strange Adventures of H is her debut novel for adults.

  As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so it is to that which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life; and without it, man is unfinish’d and unhappy.

  Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt

  Though love, all soft and flattering, promises nothing but pleasures; yet its consequences are often sad and fatal. It is not enough to be in love to be happy; since Fortune, who is capricious, and takes delight to trouble the repose of the most elevated and virtuous, has very little respect for passionate and tender hearts, when she designs to produce strange adventures.

  Aphra Behn, The History of St Agnes de Castro

  PROLOGUE

  If you have ever wondered why hangings always take place on a Monday, it is so that the chaplain of the gaol may dedicate all of Sunday to readying his charge to meet his maker. On this Sunday the usual sermon is set aside and in its stead the condemned sermon is preached to the condemned man, who is standing in the condemned pew, in front of which is placed his coffin, lest there is any chance he may for a moment forget that he is indeed to be launched into eternity on the morrow. (I do not pretend to know if this is universally the case, but it is certainly so at Newgate.)

  For weeks before, all prisoners will have been required to pray daily at chapel “for those now awaiting the awful execution of the law”, and while the condemned pew may have held ten or twenty following the last Old Bailey sessions, this figure will have dwindled – by disease, by suicide and by reprieve – until perhaps only three or four condemned men remain. On the occasion I relate, there was left only one.

  On the day of the condemned sermon, the congregation in the prison chapel is swelled by visitors: curious ladies and gentlemen, who have paid for their seats, the best in the house, from which to view the proceedings. They have come for the next part of the ceremony: the service for the dead. This the chaplain directs at the man who is to be hanged. He speaks at length in awful tones of vice and retribution, sin and suffering, shame and sorrow, grief and wretchedness, hellfire and brimstone; and of those orphaned and widowed by the crime and – worst for the condemned man – those to be orphaned and widowed on the morrow. The condemned man generally collapses, fainting under the weight of his fate, or he may turn white and clammy and become as still as a statue. Some go into a frenzy, spasm, fit, scream, and rave. This is allowed to go on for several minutes before the man is restrained, in order that those guilty of less serious crimes may be suitably impressed with the terror of his case, and so that the curious ladies and gentlemen may get their money’s worth.

  The service over, the wretch will be returned to the condemned cell, a stone box perhaps 6’ by 8’, furnished with a rope mat, a stable rug and a vigorous population of vermin of all kinds. His feast is bread, water and gruel. A small barred hole in the wall admits little air and less light, and he is allowed a candle at night. At first, he shared this cell with two or three others, but they have gone on, one way or another, and now he is alone.

  I cannot tell you how Praisegod Fricker spent his last night on Earth, as I was not there, and the particulars I have given here I have found out by general enquiry. I know only that the chaplain will surely have exerted himself to break the condemned man’s spirit, if it be not already broken, and to urge him to confess and repent, accept his fate with humility and, above all, not struggle with the hangman.

  Fricker made no confession and remained unrepentant and by the time he was given the sacrament early the next morning, he was already drunk. Pinioned and shackled, with the hangman’s noose ready round his neck, he was placed on a cart, facing the rear. He was then driven backwards through the city, through the crowds which lined the route at Holborn and St Giles, until he arrived at Tyburn, to a crowd of several thousand who had come to see him hang. The next part I may relate with greater certainty as to the facts, for I was there.

  We had arrived two hours before the hanging, to get a good place, and indeed we were about ten heads in front of the Irish women selling fruit under the gallows. Their bawling, at such close range, with the cries of the piemen and gingerbread sellers and children blowing on their tin trumpets combining with the cacophony of the crowd, made it difficult for Kat and me to talk as we waited, and, being of low stature, I could see nothing past my immediate neighbours. But Kat was taller, and was telling me by signs that the cart bearing Fricker was arriving when a low rumble swept through the crowd. A hanging is like the theatre, but the condemned man must take his bow before the performance. This Fricker did now, as he was driven through the crowd who cheered and jeered in equal measure.

  This, as you know, is unusual, as the vast majority of the spectators are generally united for or against the condemned man. They will always barrack and hoot at the executioner, and often throw stones at him, but depending on his crime and his demeanour, the condemned man often elicits some pity from the crowd, especially if his victim is seen as somehow bearing some guilt for their fate. Fricker’s case divided the crowd after this fashion: his convictions were for arson and murder, each on its own a capital offence, but the house he had set ablaze was a brothel, and the woman who had burned within it was one of the most infamous bawds in London. So while his crime was heinous, there were many who sympathised with the intention to rid the city of such vermin, and consequently some cheered him as a hero, while others cried, “For shame,” and “Pity on the poor whores.”

  A mixed cheer went up as the cart drew level with the gallows and silence fell as the crowd waited to see what, if anything, would be his final words. Would he beg forgiveness and make a good death, or would he scorn justice and die game? I had once been to a hanging where a famous highwayman had taken the constables, the chaplain and even the hangman warmly by the hand, smiling and thanking them, and then sung ‘The Miller’s Cock’ for the crowd, many of whom shed tears at such a display of courage and defiance. I do not know whether this was worse than seeing the condemned man weeping, fainting, pissing himself and having to be half-carried to the appointed mark.

  Fricker was visibly trembling, but though he staggered slightly, he seemed to resolve to gather himself, and then cried out: “God damn all whores!”

  At this, a deafening cheer went up.

  “And fuck you all!” he adde
d, to an even greater wave of something between a mighty groan of opprobrium and a roar of admiration.

  The hangman now had to act quickly. He covered Fricker’s face, ran up the steps and attached the rope to the crossbeam. He came down, took away the ladder, and lashed the horse, who flew forward, pulling the cart behind him, leaving my gentleman swinging, kicking the air.

  The onlookers were silent as he kicked and choked and shat himself. It was going on too long. People began to murmur disapproval. And then, to a universal gasp, the gauze slipped from his face, revealing his livid features, his swollen lips and ears, blood issuing from both, his eyes red and protruding from their sockets looking, as it seemed, directly at me. And still he kicked and kicked. I turned my face away.

  “You must look,” Kat said, forcing me, taking my chin in her hand. “You must see that it is done, or you will have no peace.”

  As he continued to struggle, the rope twisted, and to my relief his head turned away from me. The spectators were becoming increasingly dismayed. At this point, of course, friends or family of the condemned man would not be prevented if they chose to hang on his legs and end his agony. But it seemed Fricker had no friends or family. Voices appealed to the hangman to do the job himself. He hesitated, and as he did so those close enough became aware of a new horror. The rope had stretched so much as Fricker struggled that the tips of his toes now touched the rung of the ladder leaning against the upright. His feet scrabbled desperately for purchase. In one professional lunge, the hangman kicked away the ladder and jumped on Fricker’s legs. This must have broken his neck, for after a few convulsive twitches, he was still.

  There was a great sigh, as I suppose everyone had been holding their breath.

  “There. It is done,” said Kat finally.

  And it is true that I did find peace of a kind. In the first place Fricker could now do me no harm. And in the second place it drew a line under the whorehouse murder. For though he had indeed set the fire which burned the house and the old bawd in it, neither Fricker nor anyone else knew that she was already as good as dead.

  But Kat and I knew, for I had tied her up and Kat had beat her with the poker.

  PART ONE

  ‘H’

  1

  I was always H. As a child I never wondered whether I was once a Hannah, a Henrietta, a Hephzibah or anything else – H was my proper name as far as I was concerned and in any case I was not encouraged to ask questions. I was born in 1650, the youngest of eight children all told. The first two children, like our mother, survived only in family prayers; the six living were all girls.

  As soon as my oldest sisters were of an age, Father was anxious to see them off his hands, and they were equally anxious to escape the parsonage. Generally, Father devoted all his energies to writing his sermons, but a frenzy would descend on the household whenever a bachelor – of any age or disposition – had the ill luck to cross his path. Clarissa and Diana were engaged and married with such dispatch that Diana’s husband always claimed he knocked on the door only to borrow a book and came away with a wife.

  So that left four: Evelyn, the twins, Grace and Frances, and me. I now see that Evelyn was spared marriage because we three were too young to be left with our father only. And Evelyn had always been a little mother to me. It was Evelyn I shared a bed with and who sat beside me through all the illnesses which beset childhood. She was, as you shall learn, the best of sisters.

  I could never know enough about my mother. Evelyn would hold me on her lap and stroke my hair and feed me the scraps I hungered for: how good and kind she was, and how she would have loved me, had she lived. I clung to these thoughts as my father and grown-up sisters had a particular coldness reserved only for me, which I understood arose from a sense that my arrival into the world was a very poor trade for Mother’s death.

  Indeed, I was a naughty child. One of my earliest memories was of when I was very small and our cat, Tibbs, had kittens. Being left to my own devices, I decided to bathe the newborns as I had seen neighbours in their cottages bathing their babies. Our cook had a great ladle, which I fetched from the kitchen, and filling a basin with water (with great difficulty – I remember little of the incident but the trouble I had carrying the basin once it was full), I put each kitten in the ladle and dunked it in the water until, as I thought, it was clean enough; but actually, as one of my sisters observed, until it was dead enough.

  I was upset that the pretty kittens had become still and cold, and Tibbs was howling her head off, but my father, when he was summoned, only kicked Tibbs out of the way and scolded me for spilling water on the carpet, swept up the kittens and cast them on the dung heap. He called me “a wicked, unnatural child”, and sent me to my room. But Tibbs slept on my bed that night and purred. I could not understand it at all.

  Another event I clearly recall, as though it were yesterday, because of its awful consequence, is my first sight of plays and playing, and it is by this detail that I know it was after the year 1660 and the return of the King. I had learned that a fair was coming to Harlow and I asked and asked and asked Evelyn to take me. She said no, I should stay at home with my twin sisters as she had things to manage as Father was away from home. But I had no mind to this and kept on. When Grace added her voice to mine Evelyn capitulated and we three left Frances climbing trees and set off for Harlow Fair.

  I had never seen anything like a fair, I think, in my life. I straightway felt I was not dressed finely enough (though I had nothing fine, had I thought of it) as everyone seemed to be putting their best foot forward: bonnets fluttered with new ribbons, and Sunday bests were given a weekday outing. I saw some Morris dancers and some bell-ringers and we pushed our way through a crowd to discover they were all watching a cockfight, which I did not think nice entertainment, but which Grace affirmed was “better than Morris dancing, and more humane”.

  Then there was a tent of curiosities, in which, a man outside cried, there were “abundance of strange and fearfully deformed creatures”, including a dwarf, a mermaid and a human pincushion. I was not suffered to see these wonders, as Evelyn said she did not want to be up all night with me having nightmares. I contented myself with watching the people go in and out, hoping to catch a glimpse of a monster through the curtain.

  Evelyn showed me the men standing in line advertising for work.

  “See, he carries a crook,” she said. “He does that so everyone may know he is a shepherd, and if they want someone to look after sheep, they may find him. See, he carries a trowel; if someone wants a wall built, they can find him to do it. And he is a carter, for he carries a whip.” And so on she went down the row of men, now making me guess each man’s business by his sign, and as usual I admired her for her great learning in these matters, for Evelyn was not only kind but clever.

  At the fair I noticed some young ladies in very fine clothes, but something in their demeanour caused me to look twice. They were wearing fine clothes but did not seem as I had seen fine ladies to behave. They were laughing and talking and looking quite boldly into the faces of the men who walked by, and sometimes called out to them, while some of the men talked back to them as they would not to fine ladies.

  “And who are those women?” I asked. “What do they sell?” I could not make out any sign like a crook or a trowel. Evelyn grabbed hold of me more roughly than I was used to and pulled me away.

  I think she would have pulled me all the way home except that we came to a troupe of players. I begged to be allowed to stay and watch what was occurring, but Grace wanted to look at some silks a pedlar was selling. Evelyn said Father would not approve of us watching a play, and Grace said Father would not approve of us being at a fair, so in for a penny, in for a pound, and why shouldn’t H have a little liberty now and then? So I was allowed to watch. And my sisters soon forgot the pedlar and the silks and they watched too.

  The players were telling an old story called The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. It was about a maid called Katharina who
was proud and strong-willed, shouting and carrying on that she would not marry this man called Petruchio who was also proud and strong-willed and shouting. It was most amusing and we all laughed a good deal, but when it was over Evelyn noticed we had lost Grace and was looking about for her. During the play, Grace had had eyes only for Petruchio, as if she thought he were a real person. “He is so fine! So manly!” she exclaimed. “I would have him for a husband!” Grace had never had much wit about her and I had heard my father say she was gormless, and I remember wondering what gorm was, and why Grace had none. And now she had disappeared.

  Evelyn went looking for her among the people watching, but I thought she might have gone to look at Petruchio again, so went behind the stage. You may imagine my surprise when I saw Katharina standing by a tree, her skirts lifted up, passing water like any man. Indeed, she was a man, of course. When he turned and saw me, he noted my amazement and laughed. I said I was looking for my sister and he helped me find Grace, who was indeed talking to Petruchio. Before they saw me, I noticed the tips of their fingers were twined together, as I had seen Diana and her husband do before they were married. My sister looked very happy and her face was all red, also like Diana.

  Then Evelyn came and said we should go home and she and Grace argued somewhat. While that was happening, Petruchio was putting black paint on his face for the next play and the player dressed as Katharina asked me my name and said it was a funny one, and I said everyone said that, and then he showed me the properties they used in the plays. Up close they did not seem nearly so fine. Then he feigned to stab himself with a knife and I was frighted and cried out as I saw blood spurting out, but then he showed me it was only red ribbons. It was all most fascinating and I asked him if he liked to play ladies and he said not so much as he used to because only boys should play ladies, on account of them being smaller and having high voices, but that because the theatres had been shut for so long by old Oliver all the boy players had grown up, as he had. Besides, he said, there are now women on the stage in London, so there will soon be no more boy players anyway. Perhaps he could tell I was thinking what it would be like to be a player and dress up and make-believe rather than have to be married, as he said: “Perhaps one day you will be a fine actress in a playhouse in London, and I shall come and see you playing Katharina, and I will say to all the fine people: ‘I knew Mistress H when she was but a girl.’” And instead of bowing, remembering he was in a gown, he curtseyed low to me, which made us both laugh.