Island of Bones Read Free

places. Addie offered his hands to be tied and seemed to stumble a little. Charles swallowed. There was a man in the crowd who kept looking at him. Escape was impossible for Adair now, but might it be possible for Charles to flee? He could abandon the title that would fall on him when the hangman had done his work, and choose another name. Yes, it was possible.
    The hangman had to hold Adair steady and whispered something to him as he slipped first the hood and then the rope around over his head. To Charles, it seemed at once as if the hood had covered his own face. He saw the fierce triangle of the gallows, the thousands around him, but at the same time it seemed that everything had disappeared – that he saw only black cloth, felt the pinch of the ropes on his wrists behind him, the weight of the slack noose round his neck, his own panting breath drawing the weave to his lips. Its stink that of the sweat of other frightened men.
    The rope snapped tight and Charles felt his own breath choked out of his throat as his brother’s legs began kicking free in the air. He put his hand to his collar and struggled to breathe. All around him was this impossible noise, the elation of the crowd. Its roar became one with the rushing of his blood in his ears. His mouth tasted bitter. The hangman grabbed onto Adair’s legs and pulled hard. Charles felt his throat constrict still further; it was as if some invisible beast had its thumbs pressing down on the hyoid bone of his neck and was waiting for the snap. Two minutes, perhaps three. All eternity.
    The struggling ceased, the people cheered and whistled, and Charles gasped in air again. He lowered his face, waiting for his heart to slow. The body was cut down, and at once the hangman began to divide therope into portions and sell them to those in the crowd who had managed to push close enough to reach him.
    When Charles could look up again, he saw the body being rolled into the coffin. A man he knew vaguely from the College of Anatomy took a seat on its lid like a dog guarding a bone. Would the men he knew feel troubled about dissecting the body of his brother? Perhaps a little, briefly. But bodies were valuable. He had taken no steps to prevent their taking it. Adair had been wearing the same buff coat and silk waistcoat he had worn the previous evening; they would belong to the hangman now.
    Charles took a deep breath and stood. Already the crowd was thinning out. The spectacle was over, so the usual day-to-day business resumed.
    A man tapped him on the shoulder. ‘So that makes you Lord Keswick now, sir?’
    Charles turned his blue eyes on him. ‘What?’
    The man looked unsure and glanced over his shoulder to the place where Carmichael and Goffe had been sitting. ‘Fellow up there said you were the brother – the heir to all that money. It’s an ill wind, your lordship.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, that’s some bad blood to inherit.’ There was a gleam in his eye, a certain wet hunger in his lips.
    Charles drew on his gloves, his hands shaking only very slightly. Interesting, the strange effects on the physical body the emotions could have. If he could draw his own blood now, at this moment, what would he find in it, he wondered.
    ‘They were mistaken,’ he said, looking at the man very steadily. The man’s smile faltered and he began under that gaze to look almost afraid.
    ‘My apologies, sir. And forgive my asking. Only natural to be curious, I’m sure you’ll agree. Such a tale.’
    ‘Indeed, and I pity Lord Keswick that he must be associated with it.’
    ‘Of course, sir. My apologies again, sir.’ Charles took a step away, but the man raised his voice. ‘Your name then, sir?’
    Charles paused for a second. ‘My name is Gabriel Crowther,’ he said, and disappeared into the crowd.

The summer of 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and thunderstorms that affrighted many counties of this