English was not Madame Graveau’s first language. “I read your pamphlets hungry – no, thirsty. Thirsty, like you with my gin!” She winked, having practiced it. I think she meant to be coquettish. “I drink them up, hmn?” She pursed her lips and let out what was probably a purr. “Am I your best customer?” She made to nudge my arm, but it was a moving target and her elbow got me right in the temple. The pursed lips formed an O and her eyebrows leapt up and the purr became a gasp... it was all rather exhausting. I gestured that no harm had been done.
Mme. Graveau’s tavern had settled into a low murmur. It was the early evening after a hanging day. For hours before and after the mid-day event, the excited, intoxicated noise bulged the walls and windows, threatening to burst. Now, the structure sighed with relief. Mme. Graveau’s was, happily for Mme. Graveau, located just off Tyburn Square, four times a year the site of a wondrous, absurd carnival that erupted around London’s gallows. All the taverns within a furlong’s radius of Tyburn were settling into a low murmur. They all smelled like Mme. Graveau’s did also, you can be sure: sweat and breath, beer-soaked wood, spent energy.
“Your best customer,” she emphasized. It was true, Mme. Graveau ate up – drank up – my pamphlets describing the last hours of the lives of condemned criminals. Sometimes, it was difficult to imagine. A woman who owned a tavern would be literate enough, in the language of her customers, to read my work. But there was something surprising about Mme. Graveau, in particular, reading. She seemed too... lumpy.
My best customer, perhaps, but there were many to choose. High born, low born, and in-between gobbled up each Account of the Behaviour, Confession and Dying Words of the Malefactor