Free River Thieves by Michael Crummey

death. She could never afterwards think of them as separate things. She saw them both now in the woman she was nursing, Cassie moaning helplessly on the bunk, her arms wrapped tight around her womb. Hours ahead of her and worse still to come, Annie knew. She cleaned the slop bucket and wiped Cassie’s forehead and forced her to drink warm water so she would have something in her stomach to throw up.
    When Peyton and Reilly returned at dusk, Cassie was bleeding heavily and Annie refused to let the men enter the tilt. She stepped outside the door and told them they would have to set up a camp for the night and refused to answer any of Peyton’s questions. She spoke a few words in her own tongue to Reilly and the Irishman took Peyton by the arm and they turned away from the tilt. He looked up towards the sky for a moment and said, “Coarse night,” and it was clear to Peyton he wasn’t referring to the weather. They found a freshly killed rabbit in one of Reilly’s slips on their way towards the river. Reilly skinned and cleaned the animal while Peyton laid the fire. They roasted it on a length of alder, the dark flesh turning black in the heat.
    Peyton said, “What’s happening up at the house, Joseph?”
    Reilly pulled the stick free of the carcass and used his thumbs to break the sternum, then tore the torso along the spine with his bare hands. He offered the piece in his scarred hand to the younger man. “You and that lass are close, John Peyton?”
    “Close enough.”
    “Close enough to —”
    “No,” Peyton said flatly.
    Reilly nodded. “Is she close to anyone else you know of?”
    “There’s just myself and father,” Peyton said and he stopped himself before he took the thought any further.
    Reilly leaned away from the fire to rest on an elbow, as if he wanted to step back from the conversation, shift it in some other direction. “I expect the morning will answer what questions you have. No sense making yourself sick with it tonight.”
    They ate in silence a while then and Reilly put a kettle of snow on to boil water for tea. Peyton chewed his food sullenly. The dry flesh tasted like a mouthful of sand.
    After he’d poured them both a mug of tea, Peyton said, “Is it true what I’ve heard about John Senior?”
    Reilly laughed. “I can’t begin to guess what you’ve heard.”
    “Did he beat that old Indian to death with a trap-bed?”
    “I’ll bet you two good oars,” Reilly said, “you heard that from Dick Richmond.”
    “What difference does it make where I heard it?”
    “Sometimes it makes all the difference in the world.”
    “Did he do it, Joseph?”
    The Irishman gave a long sigh and scratched at the hair over his ear. “That was before my time on the shore,” he said.
    Peyton stared into the fire. He shook his head slowly.
    Reilly said, “John Senior’s never told you how he came to take me on, has he?”
    Before London hangings were moved to Newgate, the official procession to the gallows at Tyburn ran through Smithfield into the heart of Reilly’s neighbourhood, St. Giles, an area of the city densely populated by Irish immigrants. From there it moved through St. Andrews and Holborne and on to the Tyburn road. The City marshall led the parade on horseback. Behind him the undersheriff headed a group of mounted peace officers and constables armed with staves on foot. Behind these came the carts carrying the condemned men, who sat on their own coffins and were accompanied by a prison chaplain. More constables marched on either side of the carts.
    Thousands of people lined the streets and the procession stopped often to allow the condemned men to speak with friends and family, and sometimes to drink mugs of ale and spirits carried out to them from taverns on the route. Women threw flowers and fruit into the carts and ran into the street to touch the hands of the men being conveyed to their deaths. The pace was stately, almost celebratory. It was as if the procession was wending