“Thank you for coming to see me,” Defoe told Matthew. “You’ve given me some things to think about.” He offered his hand and Matthew shook it. “I hope everything works out for you.”
“And I you, sir.”
“Come on through,” said Parmenter with a scowl as he opened the door. “Yer jawin’ time is done.”
On the walk back to Matthew’s section, as they moved through the twisting corridor, Matthew asked, “Do you know if all the cells in the dungeon are occupied?”
“Why? You wantin’ to curl up in one of ’em?”
“No, Mr. Defoe was just telling me that prisoners due to be hanged are put there. Also those who might be considered to be…um…problems. I was simply curious.”
“Do tell.”
They went on a little further, Matthew leading and the guard a few paces behind, before the problem-solver tried again. “So are all the cells down there taken?”
“A few are empty. I could work it out so’s you can see for yourself, spend a couple a’ nice nights down there in the dark all by your lonesome.”
“I’m content to use my imagination. But one more thing: is there a locked door one must pass through to reach the cells?”
“Under an archway, across a little bridge over the shit pond and then you come to a locked gate. Y’sure you don’t wanna see it? Sweet smell down there to drift off to.”
“I’m sure,” Matthew said. He was considering the facts as he knew them to be, and he came up with another question. “How long have you been working here?”
“A lifetime, seems like. This place gets to a fella. Been here eight years next month, and don’t know whether to be proud a’that or not.”
Matthew was grateful that at least Parmenter was somewhat civil; he could imagine the response if he’d posed questions like these to Baudrey. “In your eight years, has anyone ever escaped?”
“Two I can recall. And one a’them was nabbed less’n an hour later. Two ain’t a whole lot compared to how many been through here, so…hey, wait a bleedin’ minute!” He gave Matthew a half-hearted cuff to the back of the head. “You ain’t got the right to be askin’ me such!”
“My apologies, I forgot my place,” Matthew said. They passed by one of the descending staircases. “One more, please: did either of those two escape from the dungeon?”
“Hold your tongue, Corbett,” came the curt reply. “I ain’t answerin’ nothin’ else.”
“Very well. That’s unfortunate, because I was going to trade information with you. I was going to ask for that question to be answered in return for telling you what I saw when I looked into Albion’s face, and what I’ve told no one else.”
A body was sprawled on its back in the corridor ahead. Parmenter stopped to shine his light downward on the thin, wasted form. He gave the man a quick kick to the ribs and the prisoner moaned and turned over on his side. “Up with you, Eddings!” said Parmenter. “I come back this way and you’re still here, you’ll be stretched for the lash!” He stepped over the body and continued on, and Matthew did the same. Parmenter said, “Albion don’t have no face. He wears a mask. Anyway, the warden’s told us we’re not to talk about that.”
“Pity.” Matthew had the feeling that Parmenter’s shell was not so hard that it couldn’t be breached at some meeting of joints and angles. “I’m bursting to share this with someone. It’s the kind of item I’m sure the Pin’s readership would find intriguing.”
“You ain’t got nothin’. And I don’t know what that fancy word means.”
“It means that it’s likely Lord Puffery would pay for it. Worth a guinea, I’d say.”
Parmenter didn’t reply.
They were nearing the archway into Cairo. Matthew calculated a couple more turns of the corridor before they got there. Water dripped from the cracked ceiling and ran down along the stones of the walls to make dirty puddles at their feet.
Suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed Matthew by the back of the collar. Parmenter was stronger than he looked—or Matthew just that much weaker from lack of food—because the young man was stopped in his tracks. Parmenter shoved Matthew over toward the right side of the corridor. “Listen here.” Parmenter lifted his lantern so it shone fully into Matthew’s face. “I don’t like your ways and your ear-bustin’ words.”
Matthew’s shoulder ached where it had met the wall, but it was better than being struck by the guard’s billyclub, which remained hooked to a leather belt around Parmenter’s ample waist. “Sorry,” Matthew said. “Let’s forget this discussion. This talk,” he amended. “All right?”
Parmenter ignored the request. “I got a question, then.” He cast his voice low, though they were currently alone in the corridor. “What’d you do to stir Albion up? He ain’t never set a ghostly boot in here before. So what’d you do on the outside to bring him in?”
“Nothing I can think of.”
“You kill somebody? He don’t care for killers.”
“Is that what the six victims did? They each killed someone?”
“Naw. Well…two of ’em did. Of the other four, two were roughers, one a cracksman and the other a dog buffer.”
Matthew nodded. Parmenter was describing two murderers, two common ruffians for hire, a housebreaker and a thief who stole dogs, killed them and sold the skins to furriers. He decided to press his luck, for he might not get another favorable spin of the numbers wheel. “Did one of those escaped prisoners get out of Newgate through a dungeon cell?”
Parmenter looked to right and left. Then into Matthew’s face again. “You first. What do you have I can sell to the Pin?”
Quickly, Matthew conjured something up. “Mark this: his eyes were ablaze behind that mask. They were like two windows into Hell. Shuddered my soul to look there, but I had to. Not only that, but I heard him speak. Not with the ears, mind you, but in here.” He tapped his skull. “I heard him say he’s got three more men on his murder list. One’s got the letter ‘A’ in his first name. I heard Albion say he’s sharpening his sword, and he’s going to strike soon. Maybe tomorrow night, if his plan goes well. But he’ll be out there stalking. That’s what I heard him say.”
“Go on!” Parmenter’s mouth crimped. “You ain’t heard nothin’ of the sort!”
“I did. Do you know why Albion came here to speak to me? Because…he and I are connected by murder. Yes, that’s right. The man I killed was on his murder list. He told me that, too, and he came here to thank me.”
“Go on!” This time it was spoken in a whisper. Parmenter’s beady eyes had widened, as much as they could. The guard’s hand left Matthew’s collar. “Who was it you knocked off?”
“A Prussian by the name of Dahlgren. Why he was on Albion’s list, I don’t know, but there you have it. Now tell me the Pin wouldn’t buy that, seeing as how it’s coming directly from my mouth.”
“Christ’s bloody nails!” said Parmenter. “If I was to see that in the Pin, I’d snatch it up in a second!”
“The information is yours. Just don’t give it away for free to anyone here…especially not to Baudrey.”
“Oh, I can’t stand that swaggerin’ Tom Turdbag!” Parmenter hissed. “He’s killed a baboon and stole its face! And I happen to know he’s on the White Velvet, too. Disappears for days at a time, don’t remember nothin’ about where he’s been or what he’s done.”
“The White Velvet?” Matthew asked. “What’s that?”
“Cheap gin that knocks a man senseless. Just stay away from that pi’sen is my advice…if you ever get out of here, I mean.”
“Very well. Now…about the dungeon cell and the escape?”
“If I tell…you won’t cause me to sit on thorns, will you?”
“It will be as if you never told. It’s only to feed my curiosity.” Matthew plowed ahead when Parmenter hesitated. “Have some mercy on me. I need something to think on!”
One more look to right and left, and then Parmenter gave it up. “Yep, one of ’em slipped the cage throu
gh a dungeon cell. Happened a year or so after I got here.”
“Which cell?”
“Ohhhhhh, no! This is as far as the horse wanders. Get on with yourself.” Parmenter motioned with the lantern.
Matthew started walking again. It was such a relief to be out of those chains, but he found himself still wanting to hobble with the same constricted gait. His legs had gotten used to the shackles. He could see how a man could become inured to the darkness and despair in this place, and give up hope of ever walking in the sun again. A hope all Londoners probably shared right now, with all these days of dreary downpour.
He could sense Parmenter counting his shillings from sale of that item to the Pin. It would probably make Lord Puffery squeal like a little girl. Facts be damned, Puffery wanted puffed-up fantasies, the better to feed his hungry audience; Lord Puffery probably gave thanks for the murderous presence of Albion at every mealtime.
And so too, did Matthew give thanks for Albion. He realized, as he came to the entrance archway to Cairo, that Albion’s appearance in Newgate and the figure’s puzzling display—a vow of either life protection or death promise—was keeping his mind from becoming a sloshy bowl of pudding. It would be easy here to lose all sense of purpose, all interest in anything but removing itchy lice from the beard, all curiosity save the question of how long a sick man like Wyler had left to live, all dignity, all empathy, all everything.
But now to keep his head square and steady Matthew had Albion, plus the dungeon cell from which one bird had flown out of Newgate. He still might have—God forbid—six months to fester in here, but at least he’d been presented with a problem to solve, and that to him was like a little gift of life.
Parmenter left him. He went down the steps into the chamber, where nothing ever changed very much, except for the removal of bodies.
One thing particularly bothered him. Though Matthew did not believe in omens, it seemed in retrospect he’d made a very poor choice. Why…why…in his fictional tale of “hearing” Albion speak had he told Parmenter that one of the next murder victims had an “A” in his first name?
Had he become so dumbfounded in here that he’d forgotten how to spell his own?
Fourteen
MATTHEW Corbett! Get yer ass up here!”
Baudrey was calling him again from the entrance archway. The man had a tremendous bellow but a miniscule range of expression.
Matthew stirred himself to get up from his little bedding of hay. “Popular fella, you are,” said Wyler, from his own resting place. “You ain’t doin’ somethin’ you wouldn’t tell your grandkids, are ya?”
“No.”
“What’s he wantin’ with you, then?”
“I have no idea.” Matthew wondered if Defoe wished to see him again; their visit yesterday had been a bright spot in this dismal picture. At least up there with Defoe he could get a cup of clean water and a look at the outside world.
“Watch y’self,” Wyler cautioned. And added: “Whatever it is you’re doin’.”
“Do I have to come down there, fishbait?” Baudrey hollered. “You wouldn’t like that, I’m warnin’ ya!”
Matthew made his way across Cairo’s tortured landscape. A card game was in progress, and the other prisoners were in the process—as they always were—of finding something to occupy their time and minds or otherwise dying a little more. A couple of sad candle stubs attempted illumination. Baudrey stood in the glow of the lantern he held, and truth to tell he did have a face that resembled a baboon’s. Matthew climbed the stairs, suffered a brief cuff to the back of his head for being tardy, and then was pushed along the corridor.
“Where are we going?” Matthew asked when they were a few yards along the passageway.
“You’ll find out.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. In fact he didn’t like this at all. He had learned a sense of time in here, according to the rhythms of waking up, eating and sleeping. The citizens of Cairo had been herded into the eating-room about two hours ago, by his estimation, for a supper of black bread and thin yellow soup that Parmenter had told him was pea soup, and Matthew thought it wise to ask no further questions. But if supper had been two hours ago, then it was likely seven or eight o’clock on the outside—maybe later—so what was this evening excursion about?
Last night he’d entertained the thought of slipping down into the dungeon just for a gander, but as the candles were as precious as food and water he realized there was no way to get hold of a light. There would be the locked gate to get through to reach the cells, thus his exploration of the darkened dungeon was stymied. His theory that Albion had gotten into Newgate the same way one of the escaped prisoners had gotten out would have to remain a theory. But if the theory was true, and say part of the wall had been cracked and the stones loosened by time and the movement of the earth under the city itself, then why hadn’t the warden repaired the wall in that particular cell? If a couple of stones could be moved and a body could crawl either from or into London’s underworld, why had the work been left undone? Surely the warden and the guards had gone over the cell the prisoner had escaped from and found the route he’d taken…or had they? And if that was indeed the way Albion had gotten in and out, how had he known about it?
One possibility, Matthew had realized: Albion was the escaped prisoner, therefore he knew about the cell and he knew the inner workings of Newgate.
But…another question…how had Albion gotten through at least one lock to reach Cairo? It did seem, at first consideration, the movements of a ghost. And what was so important about an imprisoned, bearded and filthy young man from New York that Albion would even care to make some sort of contact?
Matthew had no idea, but he relished the questions; now, though, the questions became more immediate, as he didn’t like being pushed ahead of Baudrey along this dank and dripping corridor. “I’d like to know where I’m being taken,” he dared to say, because they’d passed the steps leading up to where Daniel Defoe and the others were kept.
“A little trip,” came the reply.
“A trip? To where?”
“To the bleedin’ infirmary if ya don’t keep your trap shut. Keep movin’.”
They stepped over and around several bodies, but otherwise the journey to the outermost iron door was uneventful. Baudrey unlocked it and pushed Matthew through. On the other side were two hard-faced men in dark cloaks and tricorn hats that glistened with moisture. Both of the men carried lanterns.
“You’re bein’ moved,” Baudrey said. “From here to Houndsditch prison, over in Whitechapel.”
“Moved? Not that I’m unappreciative, but why?”
“I ain’t no man of the courts. Papers come across from the Old Bailey, signed by Assistant Master Lillehorne and Judge Archer. You’re out of Newgate, but don’t think they’ll treat you lightly at Houndsditch. Fishbait here, fishbait there. Want him shackled?” Baudrey asked the two men, who were obviously guards sent by the court or the constable’s office.
“He’s a pip of a squeak,” the larger of the men rumbled. “Won’t give us no pains.”
“He’s yours, then,” said Baudrey, and as a last measure of low regard he flicked Matthew’s ear with a thumb and forefinger.
With a guard on either side of him, Matthew was taken out of Newgate by the same route he’d entered. In the courtyard a black coach with barred windows awaited him. The dim light of evening was blurred even further by a low-lying yellow fog that smelled of chalkdust and wet stone. Torches burned along the walls, their glow weirdly diffused through the vapors. The air was chill yet clammy at the same time, a disagreeable condition to the lungs. Matthew was pushed into the coach and the two guards sat facing him. Because he was such a pip of a squeak and the guards evidently thought so mightily of themselves the doorbolts were not thrown. Then the coachman started them off, they passed under the open portcullis, and Matthew’s last impression of Newgate was a sound of imprisoned humanity that might have been a moan from the tortured walls of
the prison itself.
“Settle in,” said the guard who was the slighter of the two. He had a narrow face that appeared to have been crushed inward at birth, the eyes, nose and mouth all much too close together. “We got a few miles to travel.”
Which spoke volumes of the size of London, Matthew thought. He couldn’t imagine the length of the town of New York ever being a few miles of travel. But then again, who could foretell the future? Surely the Romans—and whatever ancient tribe had preceded the Romans in planting their territorial stones in the earth of what would become London—would never have believed such a city would grow from Caesar’s ambitions. So too, might Peter Minuit—and Matthew Corbett—never believe the future size and shape of New York in a hundred years. A city, Matthew realized, was itself a living thing; it either grew or died, and there was not much in between.
The horses clopped on. Through the bars Matthew made out the shapes of people moving about the streets in their cloaks of fog, heard shouts and laughter and rough music. Smears of fire indicated torches burning here and there, and oil lamps along the streets showed more civilized sparks of light.
“So you’re the one,” said the larger man.
“Pardon?” Matthew asked, turning his attention away from the window.
“You’re the one says he seen Albion. That right?”
“It wasn’t just me. The whole of the chamber saw him.”
“That’s the damnedest lie I ever heard spouted.” It was spoken with the curled lip of the born bully. “Ain’t no such bastard as that. Made up by the Pin, he is, to get a fool’s pennies. Oh, that tale a’ Albion gettin’ into Newgate has made the rounds of the Old Bailey, you can be sure.” He leaned toward Matthew with a dangerous grin. “But I say it’s a damned lie and you’re a damned liar. What say you, Petey?”
Petey said, “Damned lie, damned liar,” and it was spoken by a man who knew what was good for him.
Matthew brought up a bemused smile and aimed it at the bully. It seemed to him that neither of these two were going to do anything hurtful, seeing as how he had been rescued from Newgate by the “Assistant Master” constable himself. He would forever be grateful to Gardner Lillehorne for pulling whatever strings the man had to pull for that to happen, and he vowed he would find a way to repay him. It remained to be seen what Houndsditch was like, but surely it wasn’t as bad as what he was so gladly leaving.
Freedom of the Mask Page 18