“Put another Weight on the Stack

Said the Vagabond Half-cocked Jack

For the night is still young

I’ve got air in me lungs

And I don’t think I’m ready to crack.”

“Is that what they were caterwauling? I had wondered. It is not so bad, I suppose, for a snatch of Mobb doggerel. And very touching. But I trust that the Mobb can improve on it. Perhaps take up a collection and hire a proper Poet, with some taste. I’d fancy something in heroic couplets, iambic hexameter perhaps, and capable of being set to music…”

“Jack! Has it occurred to you to wonder why you can hear me, a departed spirit, while none of the gaolers knows I am in here?”

“No, but it has occurred to me to wonder why you leave me alone here for two whole bloody days-then show up to trouble my repose with ghastly Advice.”

“The answer is the same in both cases. You are standing before the threshold of the portal that joins your world to the next.”

“Is that a poetickal way of saying I’m about to croak?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I shall see you in a minute or two, then, I can feel myself going…I can hear the bells of Heaven ringing…”

“Actually, those are the bells of Westminster Abbey, carrying down the river on the morning breeze.”

“Why? Someone died?”

“No, it is the tradition to toll the great Bell of the Abbey as the carriage of the new Sovereign draws up before the west door. That Bell is calling all England to the Church, Jack, to celebrate the Coronation of George.”

“Did they reserve a seat for me?”

“Try and concentrate, Jack, or the ringing of that bell will be the last thing you ever hear.”

“I would like to remind you that the alternative is for me to plead. No matter how I plead, I’m bound for Tyburn, where I’ll die a much worse death than this. Hell, this is practically painless!”

“Are you not forgetting an important part of the plan?”

“What? The plan of Daniel Waterhouse?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no. I know where you are leading me now, Father Ed, and it’s not a place to which I will be led. You did this once before: forged a letter from her, to draw me in to a snare!”

“You are spread-eagled to the floor of Newgate Prison with three hundred pounds of weight on your chest and you have sixty seconds to live. It strikes me as funny that you are so wary, at such a moment, of being drawn in to a trap!”

“I just don’t wish to be made a fool of again, is all. That’s all I ask for, is a bit of pride.”

“Pride is not what you are wanting. You’ve plenty. Has it got you what you desired? No. You don’t want pride. You want Faith.”

“Oh, Jesus Friggin’ Christ!”

“All right. Barring that, wouldn’t you like to stay on another nine days, just to see how it all comes out in the end?”

“If dying means that I end up on the same plane of existence with you, and must suffer more of your prating, then nine days here begins to sound pretty good.”

“So-?”

“Oh, all right. What the hell. I’ll plead.”

“Say it louder!” de Gex implored him. “They can’t hear you! They are hearkening to the fanfare of distant trumpets!”

“Funny, so am I-I phant’sied I’d died, and that was angels blowing golden horns for me!”

“It is the trumpeter of the Household Royal announcing the entry of George Louis to Westminster Abbey. And those are the drums of his solemn procession!”

“I’ll friggin’ plead!” Jack shouted, “now take this shit off of me, already, and eject yonder Ghost.”

LATER, THE QUALITY who had witnessed it (as well as many who only wanted people to think they had) would swear that the villain’s lips had parted, baring his teeth, and that a hungry and feral look had come over his face. For Charles White had been a great man in the land, and it was no small matter to bring him down. He had to be made over, first, in people’s minds, into a kind of beast.

It happened before the west front of Westminster Abbey. All of the great persons of Britain, as well as Ambassadors and other guests from other realms, were standing about, a little bit dumbfounded from several hours of Church. For the Coronation of George was nothing more or less than an uncommonly tedious church-service, spiced up, here and there, with trotting-out of the gaudiest Regalia this side of Shahjahanabad. Through diverse Processionals and Recessionals they had sat, or stood, and every time the King had shooed away a fly it had been answered by a fifteen-minute Fanfare and a solemn Incantation. The Archbishop, the Lord Chancellor, the Chamberlain, and everyone on down to the Bluemantle Pursuivant had all checked in with one another to verify that George Louis of Hanover was the correct chap, and then they had double- and triple-checked, and run it by various phalanxes and bleacher-loads of Bishops, Peers, Nobles, et cetera, who could never affirm anything with a quick nod or thumbs-up but must bellow out pompous circumlocutions in triplicate, bating whenever the trumpet-section, organist, or choir got a whim to break out in half an hour of joyful polyphony. A busy traffic in Bibles, Faldstools, Chalices, Patens, Ampoules, Spoons, Copes, Spurs, Swords, Robes, Orbs, Sceptres, Rings, Coronets, Medals, Crowns, and Rods had cluttered the aisle, as if the world’s poshest pawn-shop were being sacked by a Mobb of under-employed Clerics and Peers, and not a jot or tittle of this swag could ever be moved from Point A to Point B without several prayers and hymns pointing out what a splendid and yet frightfully solemn event it was. Paeans flew thick and fast. Prayers were a penny a pound. The name of Our Lord was just about worn through. Christ’s ears burned. Everything was pretty resounding. Spit-slicks sprawled between trumpeters’ feet. Bellows-pumpers were sent down with busted guts. The boys’ choir grew beards.

When finally the new King had lumbered down the aisle in his purple robe and left the building, the congregants had scarce believed their eyes-as when the world’s most tedious and tenacious dinner-guest finally exits at four in the morning. There had followed a supplemental half-hour of programmed recessionals as the various guests had retreated, and gone outside to stand, blink, mingle, and chat. All the church-bells in London were pealing. The King, and the Prince and Princess of Wales, had long since gone their separate ways.

It was then that the person of Mr. Charles White had been violated by a hand that had clapped him on the shoulder. As Captain of the King’s Messengers, he was dressed for the occasion in a glorious and out-moded get-up. But even through his tasseled epaulet, he felt the hand on his shoulder, and knew its meaning. It was then-some said-that the hungry look came over him, and his lips parted.

He rounded on the fellow who had dared touch him. But then he was dismayed, and stopped. He had been looking for an ear to bite. But the man who stood before him-middle-aged, solid, well-dressed, in a yellow wig-did not have an ear on the right side of his head, just a lumpy orifice. And this so flummoxed Charles White that he quite lost the moment. He looked around to notice that he had been discreetly surrounded by several gentles and nobles, notorious Whigs all, and that they were ready to draw their swords.

“Charles White, I arrest you in the name of the King,” said the man in the yellow wig. And it was then that White knew him: this was Andrew Ellis. White had bitten his ear off twenty years ago, in a coffee-house, as Roger Comstock, Daniel Waterhouse, and a roomful of Whigs had looked on. Ellis was a Viscount or something now, and in and out of Parliament.

“I do not recognize the usurper King,” White announced-a rather impolite thing to say, under the circumstances-“but I do recognize the threat of those weapons you are so eager to draw, and so I shall go, under duress, as a man being kidnapped by Black-guards.”