“Don’t mind them, they’re only half here,” said Richards. “Come on, get you settled.”
Matthew shuffled along after him, and the others let him pass. Within a few seconds it was apparent to the new arrival that Newgate was indeed built in the fashion of a medieval castle, for there was a mazelike corridor that snaked through the guts of the place and archways leading a few steps down into chambers where lived the denizens of these depths. Filthy hay was strewn across the floors. Some of the prisoners lay upon straw-filled bedding of indescribable condition on wooden bedframes, some lay on mattresses on the floor, but most clung to dirty blankets as their only meager succor. Only men were present, the female prisoners being housed elsewhere, and Matthew saw a range of ages from boys of maybe fourteen or fifteen to men past eighty. Everywhere was filth. The deeper Matthew ventured into the prison the worse the conditions seemed to become, as if those furthest away from the outside world had lost the understanding of what it meant to be a civilized human being.
In the corridor, which seemed to have been constructed by a mad architect intent on destroying the prisoners’ sense of direction, stone staircases ascended into darkness and descended into deeper darkness. Matthew could barely make out another iron grate of a door at the top of one of the stairs, and the glint of eyes peering through as he passed. This was a huge place with many levels, all of them bad.
By the light of a few candles and the occasional obviously highly-prized lantern, Matthew was presented with a strange array of sights as he followed Ira Richards through the corridor and had time for a look down into the chambers: two men fighting, both of them already bloody and in tatters, as a circle of onlookers savagely urged them on; in the same chamber a group of men sitting together in the hay, several smoking clay pipes, and seemingly calmly holding a discussion as if at the finest teahouse in London; a madman with no legs trying to haul himself around on a little wooden-wheeled cart and hollering the Lord’s Prayer at the top of his lungs; a pair of naked men engaged in sexual intercourse while other prisoners idly looked on and what appeared to be a gray, open-mouthed corpse lay sprawled in the hay not two yards distant; another totally nude and nearly skeletal man standing on a wooden box and giving what sounded like a rousing political speech, though no one gave him a scab of attention; an old man huddled up and sobbing in a corner, a young man with a terribly-scarred face absorbed in straddling another prisoner and striking him repeatedly to the bloody, crumpled mouth in the leisurely occupation of fearsome violence; a frail long-haired youngster of perhaps sixteen wearing a pink petticoat and flouncing around the chamber to the shouts and catcalls of his fellows; and other sights that made Matthew feel he had entered not only a different world but a universe of different worlds mashed together, all of them overlapping but none quite conjunctive, and most of them perverse, tragic or simply wicked. Eyes caught sight of Matthew as he passed; some gazes quickly dropped away while others held, with ominous implications.
“Here’s your place,” said Richards. They had come to the corridor’s end. Six steps down, the chamber was the same as the ones they’d passed, just as densely populated and equally dirty if not the worst of the lot. “Cairo, they calls it. Myself, I’m in Cartagena. You’ll hear a bell ring for your meal. Four strikes of the bell. Got to warn you, though…sometimes they run out of food by the time they call this section up. And don’t try to sneak into another section, everybody knows who belongs where. Them guards’ll beat you blind, they catch you at the tables without bein’ belled. The inmates’ll do you worse.”
Matthew had no comment for this. By the looks of the half-starved population, it was not surprising news. “I see some in chains and some without,” he said. “You’re not wearing chains. Why am I?”
“I paid the chain removal fee,” Richards explained. “Pay it every month, God bless my lovin’ sister. Oh…another thing…don’t try to take nobody’s blanket unless they’re dead. Same with the beddin’. Even then, you’ll have to fight for it. Well…I brought you here, my duty’s done.”
With that pronouncement, the crabman turned away, took his lantern along the corridor and scrabbled off at his painful-looking gait.
Matthew descended the steps and thought crazily in for a penny, in for a pound. What he thought might happen did not; he was not rushed upon by the other inmates seeking to tear him to pieces. In fact a few looked at him and then looked away again, a few more seemed to be talking about his arrival behind hands that shielded their mouths, and no one stirred themselves from their blankets, their plots of hay or their mattresses. Over in the far corner a card game was going on, with five or six players and a dozen or more onlookers, and that likely had much to do with the pallid reception. But Matthew was in this case glad of pallidity. He wished to make no impression, just to be left alone. He needed time to think, to get his senses in order…and now the next problem was, where to find a resting place among all these bodies.
As he crossed the chamber in search of a space of hay long enough for himself, he noted that not only did some wear chains and others not, but not all wore shoes. A few prisoners were completely nude. Again, a wide range of ages was represented and a wide range of states of health, it appeared, though to call anyone in this chill and fetid clime healthy was stretching the bounds of sanity. A few thin and wasted figures looked to be on the edge of receiving their otherworldly rewards; if they were to receive punishments in the afterlife, Matthew thought that even God would have lost His equilibrium.
“Move on!” said a voice as raggedy as the man who owned it, speaking from his threadbare blanket on the floor. Matthew did so, and in his journey across the chamber discovered something he recalled hearing from that unfortunate but wicked individual he’d uncovered in Fount Royal: a channel in the floor moving raw sewage along from a pipe that ran down the far wall to a hole in the opposite wall, and needless to say no one had encamped around that. Neither did Matthew. In his next faltering step he accidentally trod upon one of the prisoners who appeared to be near death. The poor gent let out a harsh rattle of pain but no one paid any attention and the noise of the players at the card game didn’t falter for an instant.
“Over here, young man!” An emaciated, white-bearded prisoner with dirty fingernails three inches long was motioning to him from his own mattress. “Over here, there’s a place for you beside me!”
By the various low lights Matthew saw that indeed there was, though it was right up against a fungus-streaked wall. Today Matthew realized he was the most beggardly of the lot, and though the prisoner looked less than trustworthy he couldn’t turn this down. He started toward the man, his chains as heavy as London’s sins.
Someone stood up in his path. This man was short, had been probably stocky before he was starved thin, had a shaved head and also was in chains.
“Don’t go over there,” the man cautioned. “Old Victory bites.”
“Um…Old Victory?”
“Was a musketeer at the Battle of Dunbar, to hear him tell it. As I say, don’t go over there. He’ll be on you like the plague. Take a chunk out of you, even if you ain’t a Scotsman.”
“Thank you.” Matthew saw that Old Victory had already decided the new prisoner was not worth chewing on, because he’d settled back down on his mattress and was busy at intently counting on all eight of his fingers. “I’m new here,” Matthew said, dazedly. “I don’t know what’s what.”
“Takes some gettin’ used to. Got to be careful while you do. You’re wearin’ your chains by choice?”
“No money for the fee.”
“Ha! I wouldn’t pay it if I had it. A few others in here still wearin’ ’em, it ain’t so bad after awhile.” He looked Matthew up and down before he spoke again. “Name’s Winn Wyler. Bargeman by trade.”
“Matthew Corbett. I am—was—a…” It seemed ridiculous to talk about problem-solving in a place like this. Death was the only solution to the problems here, and Matthew figured that when one of these prisoners died he was rewar
ded with a moldy winding sheet, a muddy hole, and a wish of good riddance. “I was a magistrate’s clerk in the New York colony,” he said.
“Damn, you’re a long way from there! Took a hell of a fall, you must’ve!”
“I fear I haven’t landed yet.”
“Well spoken.” And no sooner had those words left Wyler’s lips that he coughed once, then again, a third time more violently, a fourth time and a fifth more violently still, and after the sixth he wiped dark threads of blood from his mouth with a corrupted sleeve and drew in air with a bubbling sound. “Beg pardon,” he croaked. “Get my wind back…shitty thing…dyin’ in here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why? You ain’t done nothin’ to cause it. Hey, Gimlet! Move your ass a little ways and let Matthew Corbett have a space! Danley, you too! Hell, you’re takin’ up enough room for a fat man’s pride! Come on, the both of you show some…some…” He looked at Matthew for help, because he couldn’t find the word.
“Fellowship,” Matthew offered.
“Yep, that’s it. I knew you was a smart one, bein’ a law clerk. Go on and move, the both of you! We’re fellowshippin’ today!”
The man Wyler had referred to as Danley was completely nude, as thin as a whistle and dark with scabs, but there were worse in here. And worse to come; when Matthew inquired about the proximity of water he was pointed toward an open barrel with an attached cup and chain, but there was so much scum on the water’s surface and such an evil odor rising from it that he lost his thirst.
“That’s all right,” said Wyler knowingly. “We was all like that. You’ll drink when you get thirsty enough. And waitin’ won’t help, they don’t change the water out but ever’ month.”
Matthew settled himself in the hay. He realized he was elbow-to-elbow with a naked man covered with scabs and about six feet away from a stream of slowly moving human refuse. Danley turned on his side and slept, but Wyler and Gimlet—a pale small man with bright green eyes that still held the spark of intelligence—wanted to talk. Wyler was in for his debts, being hurt in a fall and unable to work his trade; he had been here for four months. Gimlet proudly announced himself as a professional thief and said he had been here for nearly a year. Wyler helpfully explained that the chambers in this part of Newgate were called Cartagena, Budapest, Helsinki and Cairo, the last being the worst and furthest from the eating room. There were some in here, Matthew was told, been in Newgate ten, twelve, fifteen years. Like Old Victory over there. Likely to die here, Wyler said. Look at us poor sufferin’ lot, he said. We’re all likely to—
He was interrupted by a figure standing over Matthew.
“Your shoes,” said the man, in a low and menacing voice. “Give ’em here.”
Matthew looked up into a fearsome face. The man had a wide chin bearded over with gray-shot black, a low slab of a forehead, narrow eyes under heavy black brows, and half a nose. The other half had been lost to either sword, dagger or razor, and exposed as if in a scientific display was the nasal passage and the brown, hardened tissues. Though thin, this man had the broad shoulders and large hands of a brawler, and neither did he bear the burden of chains. Matthew saw that he held cards in one of those hands; the man had run out of money in his game, and he was looking for replenishment.
“Shoes,” the man said. “You want me to take ’em off for ya? Want me to break yer fuckin’ legs while I’m at it?”
“Jerrigan,” said Wyler, “have a heart. This fella just—”
“You want to give me yours, then?” A taut silence told the story. “Thought not. So shut yer damn hole.”
Matthew saw that the card players were all watching, and so was everyone else who wasn’t sick or dying. He understood; this was a test of the mettle of the new fuel for the furnace.
“I’d like to help you,” Matthew said, “but I’m afraid I—”
He didn’t finish. The fist that came down and hit him across the jaw like a flying anvil knocked him senseless.
The next thing he knew he was struggling to a sitting position with blood in his mouth and what felt like two or three loose teeth, a roaring in his head, a watery redness to his vision, and no shoes on his feet.
“Bad luck, that,” said Wyler, with a shrug. “Turk Jerrigan used to hire himself out as a pair a’ fists, ’fore he murdered his mother. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”
Matthew spat crimson for the second time today. His jaw felt as if it was hanging off his face. He shook his head to try to clear it, heard hard laughter and saw Jerrigan and a few of the others looking at him and grinning with absolutely no humor. Then they went back to their game. Matthew realized he had just been marked as a weakling unable to defend himself, and open to whoever else in this cattle corral decided they wanted something from him…and he didn’t have much left to offer, that being the central problem.
“Enjoy the day while you can,” said Wyler, as if reading Matthew’s thoughts.
Matthew could hardly speak, his jaw was so sore. “I don’t think there’s much enjoyment to be had in here.”
“You’ll see,” Wyler said, with an expression of prison wisdom. “Night comes mighty early in here.”
That was just what disturbed Matthew the most. The new fuel, held in chains, weak to this world of predators…nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to, every man for himself.
And night, indeed, was coming.
Twelve
SLEEP was impossible. He’d known it would be. In his room at the Curryford Inn on the edge of the little town of Hobb’s Square, Hudson Greathouse sat in a chair by a rain-streaked window. The time was near half-past one, the candle was a stub, the rain was still falling but…a good thing…his bottle of stout ale still had about two cups’ worth in it, and he was determined not to waste a drop.
He poured himself a fresh drink. Did the rain thrash a bit harder against the glass, or was it his imagination? He wondered if Berry, in the next room along the corridor, was finding it easy to sleep. He doubted it; she was as much on edge as himself. They were still over a hundred miles from London, the road to that city—such as it was—had become a quagmire in this miserable weather, and to cap the pleasantries this afternoon the rear right wheel of their coach had snapped off its axle and he and Berry had had to walk nearly a mile to this inn. Their trunks had been of necessity left with the coach, and the coachman left to negotiate a solution to the problem, which meant leaving the second driver—armed with a sword and a blunderbuss—to guard the goods while the first man trekked into the hamlet of Hobb’s Square to find a new wheel or have one made. Hudson and Berry had been told they might get back on the road within a few days, depending on the talents of the local wheelwright. In the meantime—tomorrow, which was today—a wagon would be secured to deliver their trunks to the inn, so at least they could have a change of clothes.
Thinking about it, Hudson wanted to dash his ale bottle against the wall, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. There was no telling when they’d reach London, and just last night when they’d been eating their dinner at a tavern in the village of Chomfrey, Berry had expressed her feeling that Matthew was in terrible danger, and that she feared beyond fear that when they found him it would be too late.
“We either find him or not,” Hudson had said, pausing in his delectation of a kidney pie. “What do you mean, ‘too late’? As in, he’ll be hanged for murder by the time we get there? No, they’ll put him in some gaol for awhile. He’ll have to be tried by the crown’s court. Anyway, there are so many to be hanged before Matthew gets the noose, it’ll be summer before—”
“You’re not helping,” she’d said, and she pushed her bowl of parsnip soup aside.
“Sorry. What I mean to say is, he’s a big boy. You know he can take care of himself. We’ll find him and we’ll clear all this up, don’t worry. And if you don’t want that soup, pass it over here.”
“It’s the gaol part I’m most worried about. What if they…what if they put him somewhere dread
ful? I’d imagine that all gaols there are dreadful…but I’m sure some are worse than others.”
Hudson had taken a drink of his mulled wine, listened to the wood popping in the hearth for a few seconds while he formulated his reply, and then said, “You heard what Moncroff told us. Matthew’s gotten himself sent to London so he can find Gardner Lillehorne. God help London, but Lillehorne can surely help Matthew.” He flashed her a quick smile but she was too disturbed to return it. “Anyway, it’ll serve him well that Lillehorne knows Matthew’s history.”
“You think that will serve him well?”
“Lillehorne may be a…excuse the word…shit, but he won’t let Matthew flounder. If he’s got any kind of pull at all there by now, he’ll speak a good word.”
Berry had been quiet for awhile, also staring into the crackling flames. Then she’d returned her calm gaze to Hudson but he immediately saw that it was a thin disguise, that she was holding herself together with pins and needles just as he was.
“What I fear,” she told him, “is that without me…someday he’s going to run out of luck. I just hope it doesn’t happen before we find him.”
Now, in his room at the Curryford with rain striking harder at the window and the chances of their reaching London anytime soon diminishing by the wet and muddy hour, Hudson knocked back his last cup of ale and considered Berry’s statement about luck.
Though Lillehorne might hold a grudge for past grievances, imaginary or not, surely he would be a helping hand to Matthew. Lillehorne was a bumbling blowhard, but he wasn’t evil. Yet Lillehorne had not been in his position long enough to have much clout, politically speaking, so that was anyone’s guess. Where might they put a man accused of murder on the high seas? A holding cell, of course. Better that than…
Freedom of the Mask Page 15