We’ll stick together no matter what comes for us, but I wish I could offer more. I don’t even know how to keep us fed now my cafe is gone.
Stealing is probably easier in the Victorian era, with shittier locks, no cameras, no fingerprints. But then, the punishment could be so much worse, and the people we’d steal fromlikely have no insurance, no safety net to fall back on. No unemployment benefit, just debtors’ prison.
They’ll be dead soon.
The old rallying cry for crime and destruction.
A laugh breaks out in the bar. August, and August, and Jon. I recognise my August’s laugh distinctly. He’s busy keeping everyone’s spirits up, the ever-beating heart of the operation, who has no understanding of how quickly this would fall apart without him. I certainly couldn’t go on. But now I do, seamlessly, not letting a sign show that I’m worried we’re all going to die far more brutal deaths than we ever would have if we’d just slipped away in our own world.
We could have ended it all so much more cleanly.
But that’s not what August wanted.
So, I raid the larder. Cheese, wheels of it. There’s some of yesterday’s bread, stale but perfectly serviceable. There are dried meats, pickled vegetables, oat crackers. I drag it all out, piece by piece, into the bar, and set a feast for us. But before we eat, I wrap some in clean linen to take with us. We have no bags; we have nothing else to carry these goods in. But we’ll make do because we have no choice.
From the looks of the group, gathering around the meal, you wouldn’t know we were likely to die. The ale is flowing, they’re shoving in as much food as they can, as quickly as possible. August calls me to his side the moment I enter the space.
He’s saved me a plate of food.
That smile.
My chest turns in on itself.
This is everything I’m living for. That smile, movies, zucchini pie. August by my side.
We leave the pub while it’s still dark. We tidied a little because we all feel guilty for what we’ve done. But this is survival.
We’ve agreed to wind our way towards August’s house, or where it will eventually be built, since that’s how we came out of the time slip last time. The beer and the tiredness must be getting to everyone, and a lull takes the group as we amble through the still-warm early spring morning. There’s a hint of dawn coming in pink, and that worries me. I’ve never slipped for this long.
When we find the location of August’s future flat, nothing changes, so we walk on without a word. Some natural inclination takes us towards Primrose Hill. Maybe because that’s the one thing that will be familiar. How much can that have changed?
In fact, it strikes me as a perfect place to lie down and take shifts getting some sleep. Safer in the daylight, surely. And maybe at nightfall, we can try again, walk the streets where we slipped, break into the same pub to find more resources. Do it daily for as long as it takes. Or until we’re caught. I don’t have a better idea.
By the time we get to the edge of the park, the sky is brightening, awash with sunshine and a streak of golden clouds. It appears for a moment we’ve come out in the wrong spot. The trees here are so much thicker than the ones I’ve passed with August several times now. I’m about to ask him when a movement deeper in the park catches my eye.
Shashi’s already seen it, and shushes us with the barest of utterances. She moves into a thicket, pulling Amber with her.We all follow, while she slips forward, pressing through trees and bushes to find a better vantage point. Finally, she stops, sinks down, and I peer over her shoulder.
There’s a crowd, really a large crowd for this time of day. There’s someone talking loudly, addressing them, but we can’t quite see who or hear the words clearly.
We circle around a little until a talking man comes into view. He’s wearing a… some sort of skirt. His top half is clad in thick sleeves and a vest, and at his neck… Surely not… a ruff?
“Fuck.” Amber seems to have understood the same moment I did. She moves a little further around, then comes another “Fuck!” hissed under her breath.
We all scramble over, trying to keep ourselves unseen and unheard. But as we scurry, we pass a large tree that was blocking our view, and the top of the hill is revealed.
No longer the place of beauty we rested on, where I touched August’s hand as we looked at the stars, this Primrose Hill has a scaffold erected high on its peak, casting a bleak shadow that stretches down its side, as if reaching arms for us.
The speaker stops. His hand drops. And with it comes a clunk. A clunk, and the sickening fall of three black shapes, that wriggle and writhe in the bright morning sun, bodies dangling from the ends of ropes.
The crowd screams and hollers, applauding the scene. Shashi turns away, her face pure revulsion, like she might be sick. She drops to the forest floor, August slides down next to her, while Jon and the other August pass quiet whispers back and forth.
It’s Amber who watches on, bright and alert. “I know of only one execution on Primrose Hill,” she says, her voice barely audible. “Three Catholic farmers for the Edmund Goffrey murder. That, and judging by their clothes, I’d say we’re in sixteen seventy-nine.”
“What?” August’s horrified eyes shoot up to me.
My thoughts exactly. But that’s preposterous. “How can you know that?” I throw at her. “How can you possibly pinpoint this so exactly?”
“Well…” She purses her lips. “That’s my PhD. Death in London: Revisiting Contentious Executions and the Public Spectacle of Criminal Punishment in the Seventeenth Century.”
