I could only see one of her eyes and it scanned me up and down.
‘Investments don’t interest me. Only their dividends.’
‘The dividends will come soon enough.’
‘I would be a fool, in my business, to accept credit.’
‘Credit is the partner of fortune,’ said I, words learned from My Lord Uxbridge.
There was a grumble from behind the door, then the sounds of mucus being sucked from the nose into the mouth, followed by the hollow ding of a spittoon being struck.
‘Your friend,’ said I, ‘sounds delightful.’
‘I must go,’ whispered she, withdrawing from our conference.
I placed the toe of my shoe in the doorway. ‘I do not abide refusal so easily.’
Her one eye widened. ‘Fool. Go.’
‘I shan’t leave until I’ve had your fullest attentions –’
Her door was then swung wide to reveal a man similarly sized to the opening, both in breadth and height, dressed in only boots.
‘Woh’ cunny fink’ll stop me fuck’n?’
I needn’t mention of his substantial endowment, which veered right.
‘Forgive me,’ began I, stepping back.
‘Nu so fast ’ittew un,’ replied he, grabbing my coat. ‘Wu’ ya inneruptinus foh ’en?’
‘I had but a trifling errand. No trouble. No trouble at all.’
‘Ya wanna spenna few farvin’ on m’girl, ay?’
I found myself lifted near off the floor. Two buttons popped and bounced with a puny tinkling. He smelled much like the streets, of shit and brew mixed together then brewed anew.
‘’Ow bout ya hanover em now, ’en? In lieu ovva services? ’Dvance pay, let’s caw it.’
‘Oh, Blueskin,’ said Miss Elizabeth Lyon, laying a hand on his elephantine shoulder. ‘Leave the poor boy, he means no –’
‘I dun nee y’pinion neiva.’ He went to strike Miss Lyon but she swiftly dodged his hand.
‘Pick on someone your own size!’ said I.
‘Ain’ nowuh me size, mate,’ replied he. ‘Neiva abuv nor below.’
He grinned, looking down at his trunk, then back to me. A tongue squirmed from his bristly mouth to capture a crumb lodged at the corner. Two more doors opened behind me; four heads, all female, watched my shoes kick around in the air. He reached into my inner pocket with his spare hand, fingers swiping at the lining, methodically searching each of my seven pockets until he came upon the coins.
‘Wo’ we ’av ’ere, ’en.’
My feet were back on the floor as he inspected the denominations with his drunken eyes. I went to run, but he grabbed me once more.
‘Nuh so farss, boy,’ said he, eyeing my valise.
His snail-flesh eyes were opaque with incomprehension as he opened my case and inspected the illustrations on Gyssels’s pepperpots. In this brief pause I became privy to Blueskin’s one vulnerability – hanging openly before me like grapes from a vine viz. a scrotum and the two testicles enclothed within, which I reached for with my left hand, and gripped with all the might I could muster. I clamped down upon one, which was still a full hand’s worth. The giant howled and grabbed my throat with his right.
And so we had each other held, opposing hands on opposing life-forces. Behind us gathered a pack of gossip-hungry whores, eager to see who would overcome whom. As my body drained of air, I watched Blueskin’s face turn plum-purple, his eyes going from fury to disbelief to desperation. My own world was closing in, drawing to the centre in a fuzzy blackness as my body began its dying. But I directed whatever power remained in me to crush that hairy fruit.
As it turns out – a lesson with a multitude of applications – a man will sooner die of crushed balls than suffocation, for I was upon my last living moments, certainly about to expire, when I felt the slackening of his grip.
‘Peez,’ said he, his eyes streaming. ‘Peez stop.’
I had won.
I sucked air, my throat whistling as the tubes reopened.
‘I will release thee further,’ I replied, tempering my grip a little. ‘But we must come to an agreement.’
‘Anyfin’.’
‘Are you a man true to your word?’
‘Anyfin’. I beggin’ ya.’
‘Aye,’ responded I, now lightly holding his ballbag so that no further pressure was applied. I wasn’t much enamoured of my position, his endowment lying across my forearm as I held his scrotum at the ready.
‘What is your assurance that you’ll not pummel me upon my releasing of your knackers?’
‘Take me shiners.’
‘I need not of your money.’
‘I swearin’ to ya. ’Pon me mudda.’
Now in this moment, permit me to take pause but briefly, for little did I know that the man I had just overcome was none other than Blueskin Blake, renowned highwayman, gambler and pugilist. It was therefore to my infinite advantage that several whore-witnesses saw my conquering of this man, for word would soon spread like wildfire from Westminster to the Isle of Dogs, of a small man by the name of Jonathan Wild, in a green coat with scars around his eyes, who was either audacious or stupid or a powerful combination thereof.
‘You are owed this,’ said I, handing him back the coins that he had stolen from me. ‘For had I not taken you by your weakest point –’ I gave a quick squeeze to keep his attention ‘– you would have surely owned them.’
‘Me fanks, sir.’
‘My name is Jonathan Wild. Do not forget what I have done for you.’
‘It wo’ be a’gotten.’
‘Now, I request private audience with Miss Lyon.’
‘Oiyl grant ya’ anyfin.’
‘And I might just have those shillings back, on second thought.’
‘Take ’em.’
I released the poor man and he collapsed, cupping his balls, soon losing consciousness right there on the floor.
‘You’ve attacked Blueskin Blake. You’re as good as mince,’ whispered Miss Lyon.
‘For you, Miss Lyon, did I take him by his jewels.’
‘You’ve no idea what you’ve done,’ said she. ‘Take to the hills and don’t return.’
‘We made an agreement. He swore upon his mother.’
‘Do not fool yourself. There is no protection from the likes of Blueskin.’
‘I will take my chances. This is for you.’
I handed her the shillings, all I had left of value besides my suit and King Richard the pheasant.
‘And what do I owe for these?’ said she. ‘I’m not much in the mood for business.’
‘I ask only lodging and victuals for now.’
‘For now?’ repeated she.
‘When you’re ready, I should also like to hear you sing.’
‘Two shillings will not afford you all that – lodging, victuals, singing.’
‘My investment, once liquidated, is valued at six hundred, thirty-eight sterling, six shillings, four pence.’
‘That would cover it.’
‘I intend on making you my wife. Do you hear me?’
I have only seen whales breach in paintings, but I reckon it a similitude to Blueskin Blake awaking. The whole room quavered.
‘Me balls,’ moaned he.
‘Ball,’ corrected I.
He rose unsteadily to return his stockings. ‘Bessie,’ said he, turning to her. ‘Ya know iz fucker ’ere?’
He pointed to me.
‘Blueskin,’ said Miss Lyon, speaking like a mother. ‘I believe you made this young man a promise.’
‘I dunna ’member no promise.’
I backed towards the door, but his arms spanned the entire room.
‘You promised me,’ said I, desperately. ‘Come now.’
‘Gin izza good fa ’membering.’
‘You swore upon your own mother.’
‘Me mudda’s dead az ew’ll be inna minute.’
‘Her memory, then?’
But my importunes were not heeded. Now it was m
y turn to lose consciousness.
I am not unaccustomed to beatings. However the fierceness of Blueskin Blake cannot be compared to my dear father or Master Dampier, and it was a miracle I was not struck unto my death. My luck on this account was owing to his testicular enfeeblement; according to sources within Dirty Lane, Blueskin was not the same man for weeks, his gonad apparently inverted – shaped like a shallow bowl – and his walking like one who rode country without a seat.
Miss Lyon found me space in a storage closet between two terrace-rooms. Even with my knees up about my chest the door could not be closed. Miss Lyon’s mistress, a hag named Mary Cockshot, was dead against my staying.
‘I’m not running an effin’ poorhouse,’ said she, when Miss Lyon implored of her charity. But Elizabeth Lyon must have been good for business, as when she threatened her own departure over it, Mary Cockshot assented, granting me a maximum of two and a half weeks.
‘In the closet only,’ added she. ‘And not a word about it. Or every whore’ll demand a pet.’
I have heard it said that pain is but weakness leaving the body, but no interpretation of it would soothe the realities of my dislocated jaw, bruised eye-sockets, fractured ribs and broken arm (set crudely with stick and ribbon by one of Miss Lyon’s physician Johns). I’ve never spent such intimate time with anyone or anything as I did with My Pain. In the desperate darkness I appealed to it like a recalcitrant child, sometimes cajoling, ‘How I’ll reward you with comfort, with cushions, if you rest …’ at other times shouting, ‘You’ve made your point. Enough!’, but these pleas were the mouse-squeak of a novice lawyer against the roar of a mighty magistrate.
Nor would My Pain take a moment’s sleep; my dreams were spent looking at my broken arm as a dismembered thing, trying to reattach it. Another recurring dream – no doubt fostered by the bundled hessian mat upon which I uncomfortably lay – was of walking down on a wet, muddy road, my boots sinking deeply into oozy mud, searching for a place to rest. Just as my hip touched the supple mud a wagon came screaming towards me and I would jump from its path. I often awoke to my head colliding with the cupboard wall.
For those weeks I was fed bone broth in clumsily sculpted pots, the watery substance thin and beefed with dishwater. Lying in the dark and stuffed from sight like a journal in a drawer, I was given much time to thinking – to carry the metaphor too far – about that which had been written in my book. Every indication was that my luck had run its course. You can’t get much lower than this, I told myself; all broken up in a cupboard, subsisting on dishwater. Oddly, it was the words of the Bible – spoken many times by Master Dampier – that reverberated off the cupboard walls and back into my broken head once more:
As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labour and emptiness;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
My Master Dampier would’ve credited my remembrance of the passage as the stifled scream of an unsalvageable soul. Though I wasn’t sure it was my soul that was screaming; it might just have been the Johns. Through the single filament of vertical light that was my window, I watched men come and go, their ejaculations arriving and departing with all the labour and emptiness that Psalm 90 foretold.
It was the infuriating regularity of these ejaculations that perhaps awoke in me the old machine of my ambition. Some ten days following the beating, I attempted to remove myself from the cupboard. But resolution has a terrible habit of promising more than it can deliver, for all it took was a few steps about the hall for my resolve to be quickly and savagely replaced by incapacity and dismay. The only bodily movements I was capable of were on the inside of my mouth, as with my tongue I removed strings of vegetable husk that caught in the fleshy pits where my teeth once had been. The line of light flickered with every passing John, and I relieved myself into the same broth-vessel from which I drank. Labour and emptiness, I thought. Labour and emptiness.
About fourteen days later, as the throbbing began to abate, my senses became even more aware of the goings-on around me. The unbuckling of belts, the susurrus of falling slips, rhythmic creaking, sudden crescendos, the tinny clink of counted coins. And ’twas mighty slow, the ticking of this devilish clock, each unbearable sound echoing around the inside of my cupboard. The terrace was indifferent to my suffering, it conspired against me – its walls were a living flesh, a slowly tightening fist. And just when I thought the day might end, whatever a day was, there would be more of it, more boasting Johns, more gossiping whores, more pissing into pans, more windows opening, more doors closing. I have heard it said that at moments of great danger, time can slow and stretch, giving the endangered a much-needed interval to dodge the collapsing wall or grip the solid branch. Maybe this instinct had been activated without a possibility to switch it off, or maybe it was every bit as bad as it seemed. Whatever the reason, something had to give. So, for the first time in my short life, I did two inconceivable things:
1) I feared Hell.
2) I made a plan.
WILD
I cast out my net from Dirty Lane
1705
Some days later during a pause in business for Miss Lyon, she sat, back to wall, elbows on knees, and whispered through the crack in the cupboard door.
‘Don’t return my parley,’ said she. ‘For I know your jaw is yet to hinge. But I thought a friendly voice might be to your benefit.’
I stuck out a thumbs up, and then withdrew.
‘I’ve thought often of the day you were beaten,’ spoke she, in a kind of reminiscence. ‘You said that you intend to make me your wife. I thought it the most laughable statement ever spake. For you must be either madman or child or fool to wish a whore for your wife. And with your treatment of Blueskin – both the attacking and then releasing of him – it was confirmed that you are all three.’
I turned my thumb upside down.
‘But then I contemplated,’ continued she, ‘on these characteristics. And I wondered as follows: if one combined these traits of child, fool and madman with the traits of cunning, vigilance and cleverness, you might end up with a … a visionary.’
My thumb went back up.
‘’Tis yet to be settled which you are: visionary or fool. But what will be settled – regardless of what we dub you – is that you shall be cast from here any day. Mrs Cockshot will not tolerate your shoes in the hall much longer. So you’d better devise which you shall be and how’ll you go about it.’
I pressed my lips to the crack in the door.
‘I, too, am tired of pissing in this pot,’ croaked I, handing her my last urination. The sound of my voice was foreign and throaty. ‘Now, if you would be so generous. A candle, paper and quill.’
Dear ‘Blueskin’ Blake,
It is my expectation that these words are presently being recited to you, as you don’t have skills at letters, and I request you not kill the messenger, for if I imagine right, I – the acted I, the reciter of this letter – am but an innocent soul, unawares of how I – the real I, the composer of this letter – crushed that velvety testicle of yours.
Did you know that, together with Miss Lyon, I brought gin to your lips to aid your pain? I even patted your back. For, I realised soon after inflicting such extreme violence, it was only reasonable of me to soothe the pain of one reckless enough to attempt at robbing me, Jonathan Wild.
However, I don’t write purely to remind you of my compassion. I expect you’ll be afeared to meet with me again, but propose that we do so, only this time to discuss a scheme for our mutual benefit.
If I may be so bold to suggest:
Five of the afternoon.
Seven Dials.
Tuesday the 15th of the month they call January.
You needn’t confirm; I shall presume you there, however I may be reached by means of our mutual friend, Miss Elizabeth Lyon.
Until then I remain,
Your dutiful nemesis,
<
br /> Jonathan Wild
Monday, 14th December, 1705
My Lord Uxbridge,
Before you throw this paper to your large, enviably chiselled hearth, read just two paragraphs, for I durst not ask more of your precious time. I imagine you’re prodigiously ‘busy’ with Footman Crowley, who was, admittedly, a finer and more devoted specimen than I.
Since my departure, I’ve sadly had but little time to reflect upon the decision I made to quit your fine estate, what with my daily energies so quickly seized with investment opportunities. In collaboration with royalty from Flanders and The Nederlands, I took a stake in a new mechanical innovation. I’m sorry, I would have liked you involved, but the register is all full up. But that is by the by.
Whilst your treatment of me was far from fleecy, I wish to repay your early kindness by informing you that upon one of my business trips I happened across certain items of yours for sale at a pawner in Bristol. I expect none other than Nicky Lips, your pastry chef, to be the burglar, however with so many staff I would hate to point the wrong finger, so to speak.
I took the liberty of purchasing these items for you, as they were priced at less than replacement value. Them being:
6 emerald buttons
6 oyster forks
1 garnet-encrusted bracelet (Looks old! Maybe from the cabinet opposite your study?)
1 velvet toy pheasant.
As you’ll see by the bill, I paid in sum nine guineas, eight shillings and four pence for the kit and caboodle. If you could please remit this amount to me together with a finder’s fee of four guineas to the following address, I’d be much obliged. To think of the effort you’d go to replace these items, I figure my finder’s fee not an impudence but a small and most reasonable remuneration.
If for some reason you decide not to repossess these items, so be it, I will still remain,
Your faithful servant,
Jonathan Wild
Monday, 14th December, 1705
P.S. Take no meaning from the location of my return address. I, of course, would not deign dwell in Dirty Lane, ’tis but another of my investments. In your own wise words, ‘Cater to the rich and you’ll …’ I’m sorry, I cannot remember the rest.
Wild Page 16