Free Lies and Misdemeanours by Rebecca King

can’t get this wrong she whispered. She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the baying of the crowd. Her ears hummed from the cacophonous onslaught. She desperately wished she could open her mouth and scream at them all to just shut up, but she couldn’t.
    In a desperate attempt to keep her gaze away from the macabre sight of the wooden scaffold, she looked down at the groove that had been worn into the stone pavement to show the carpenters where to construct the deathly frame. It seemed to be the embodiment of evil to have something so blatant on the roadside where everybody could see it. The fact that it was there at all seemed to emphasise just how blaze the populace had become to the regular public demonstration of putting someone to death.
    “Everything ready?” Wally suddenly growled in her ear.
    Hetty jumped, startled. She hadn’t realised he was there. She nodded jerkily, and nodded at the warning in Wally’s eyes.
    “Keep your head down and your mind on why we are here. If all goes to plan, we need to move quickly.”
    He didn’t have to tell her of the dire consequences for them both if she failed at this. The heavy weight of responsibility for someone else’s life settled uncomfortably on her narrow shoulders and, in spite of her bravado, now that the hour was nigh, she began to waver ever so slightly.
    If you think what you are going through is bad, think about what Charlie is going through inside, she reminded herself.
    “Are they there?” she asked, aware that Wally had spoken to several of the men in the tavern who had offered to help get Simon and Charlie away from the area.
    If anything went wrong, they would hang on the men’s feet so their deaths were swift.
    “I am ready,” Hetty replied firmly. “I will do my part.”
    “Good. Have you seen him?” Wally whispered.
    Hetty shook her head. She knew who he referred to; Meldrew. “You?”
    “He is here. I saw him a while ago, over by the pub,” he nodded to a two-storey white building over to the left of the scaffold. “Try to stay out of sight.”
    He looked at her bright red hair, and nodded. Hetty carefully drew her shawl up over her shoulders, and tugged the end over her hair. Although she had tied her hair back into a tight bun, several strands still broke free and stood out like a beacon amongst the general populace of darker heads.
    Not for the first time in her life, she cursed her red hair. The family’s distinctive red locks were a throw-back from their Celtic ancestry, but not a good one at that as far as Hetty was concerned. Why couldn’t she have been blessed with black hair, or even dark brown? Anything would have been better than the veritable halo of red that sat atop her head like a crimson flame.
    She looked at her eldest brother. “If it goes wrong -”
    Wally lifted his hand and slowly shook his head. “Now, don’t you be thinking like that, do you hear? Just do your bit. Leave the rest to us.”
    “If something goes wrong and they get me,” Hetty whispered.
    Her eyes met and held Wally’s meaningfully. She didn’t quite know what to say or how to say it. She watched a dark frown settle over his face.
    “We won’t let this happen to you either. Now, forget about all of that. It is not going to happen. Do you hear me Hetty Jones? Just do what we agreed.”
    She knew that ‘us’ referred to the numerous good friends and associates of the family who had fallen fowl of Cedric Meldrew at some point or another during his time as magistrate. Whether there were enough of them though was anyone’s guess.
    “Does he have many men with him?” Hetty whispered.
    “Five or six. The usual thugs, I think,” Wally replied as he scanned the crowd around them. “I am going to take up my post.”
    Hetty nodded, and was about to turn away when her gaze was captured by someone in the crowd. It wasn’t that he was any different to the other people around her. It was just the rather too intent way he was staring at her.