‘You’re the Thief-Taker General, Jonathan Wild?’
‘I am.’
‘So is it true, about The Lad?’
Wild snorts, nods.
‘Do you think you’ll catch him once more?’
He glares. ‘By the grace of God.’
‘You’re a religious man, then?’ asks Defoe.
Wild ignores the question.
Defoe is sweating heavily and his heart pounds. They are moving quickly now, gliding.
‘How do you answer,’ asks Defoe, ‘to the accusations regarding him?’ It is hard to get the question out clean, with the exertion.
The Thief-Taker glares. ‘Excuse me?’
‘They say Sheppard was one of yours. And you gave him up.’
‘Old man, rowing is your only concern.’
Defoe keeps gathering pace. A drop of blood falls to his pants. ‘Mr Wild,’ he says, puffing. ‘I am a pamphleteer, too.’
Wild sniggers. ‘Evidently.’
‘And slowing,’ calls Sackville as they approach St Magnus Stairs.
Defoe releases the oars and stretches his lower back. The wound in his hand is sending chills throughout his body. Wild adjusts himself again and again. He does not look happy.
‘Would our eminent Thief-Taker,’ says Defoe, bowing, ‘allow me to say one thing more?’
Wild throws up his hands. ‘Very well, oarsman. But your proprietor will hear of it.’
Defoe leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees and plays with his bandage. ‘I once was much like you, Mr Wild, ambition and pride at the helm. Now, I am, just as you remind me, a has-been, an old oarsman. But meeting you today, with your silly green coat and those pistols … I think not. I think I might be resurrected. I have some fight left in me, Mr Wild. I do!’
Wild raises his eyebrows in bemused disbelief. He stands and adjusts his belt. ‘Quite mad. Pitiful.’
Defoe salutes, grinning. ‘Good day, Mr Wild.’
THE LAD
My last days are spent in Kentish Town
October 1724
I was put to bed in Highgate Road, Kentish Town, in a small pleasant room above the workshop of a chandler named Lovestruck. God be blessed, that downy bed was like lying in clouds after so many weeks on the cold hard earth. Hell-and-Fury insisted I now go by another name and story, and I settled on Dickory Cronke, from Talskiddy, Cornwall, visiting London for innovative treatment of my speech impediment. According to Hell-and-Fury, these accommodations were funded by Bessie.
‘Buh she ain’ wanna know a fing ’bout it, Lad. Nuffen.’
Another week passed in a pleasing and stupefying haze of tincture provided by a local doctor and afternoon gin-diddles with Quilt. With pictures of me posted on every noticeboard and descriptions cried on every corner, he demanded that I rarely leave my rooms. The bounty was now at over fifty guineas. According to Quilt, Wild was off the hooks mad ’bout it, owing to some personal consequences of my gaolbreak. I can’t deny this news being to my great satisfaction. And to an even greater satisfaction did I then delight each morning, sitting down to a table spread with a chipped enamel pot of coffee that steamed into the dusty sunbeams and a warm doughy cinnamon-whorl made by the local baker named Baker. And this satisfaction wasn’t only for the delightful foods or the chirruping of brightly breasted birds that sat on the awning flag, but for the damage and infuriation I knew to be causing my nemesis, by doing sweet-fuck-all, drinking a coffee and chewing and just being daily alive in Kentish Town.
For whole days and nights I was left to unbearable solitude. So despite the warnings, I began disguising myself as a gentleman and venturing out into the world, often ending my ambulations at Cork’s Alehouse on York Way. Invariably the subject of Jack Sheppard AKA The Lad was discussed among the patrons; his whereabouts, his history, his company, his stature &c.
Wild spread his falsehoods each week through Applebee’s Journal or Parker’s Post and so I was very surprised to hear a second opinion being spoke. Of The Lad’s benevolence to the poorfolk of London. Of his fearlessness. Of The Lad being a pawn in a much wider, more sinister game. If there is anything that obeys the law of rising cream it is rumour. London was bored of dangerous pickpockets. Corruption, now that was something new.
Some weeks later, on an unusually warm morning, Lovestruck the chandler announced I had a lady-visitor, ‘all dressed up, like,’ wanting to see me.
‘Impolite, too,’ he added, laying down my board. He asked if I was of a mind to receive her, to which I nodded and moments later, to my great and trembling contentment, appeared none other than Miss Elizabeth Lyon. She stood dead still as the door made a slow creaking arc, assessing me like a mother does a son returned from war.
After this initial pause, she approached me with a resolved gait, dropping her bag at the doorway and placing her cheek against my own, whispering into my ear that I needn’t ask or beg or coerce any longer, that I needn’t say a word, that she didn’t realise she loved me until this very moment.
‘You are always happy,’ she said. ‘How?’
Even if I could have spoken, I wouldn’t have said a word. She kissed my neck, my ear, my lips.
‘Don’t say or do anything,’ she said, unbuttoning my shirt. ‘Just be with me. Look at me, dear Jack. Don’t take your eyes off me. Yes, yes.’
Her hands were moving quickly about my clothes, rubbing at my cock. She was somehow attending to her own dresses too. Her back was against the wall as we kissed deeply. Before I could understand how, my cock was free of my pants and her left leg was over my right arm. She looked me in the eyes. Then, for the first time in my whole sorry short existence did I feel the inside of a woman. She was saying things to me, making noises of her own. I was silent, bewildered. Her eyes were closed and flickering and with increasing intensity she pulled me towards her so I was grinding rather than thrusting. I didn’t understand the geometry and anatomy of how this worked, how so much of me could be swallowed while we stood, where exactly her opening was, how I was angled inside her. I could only follow her direction. Then, with a deep guttural noise, a sudden wetness was all over my pelvis, all over my thighs, together with the sound of fluid and squelching. Her face went red, the veins in her neck tumescent and her advanced age became frighteningly visible. I worried that I had wet myself, but it wasn’t me. In only a few moments more I had my own ejaculation, my arse and back shaking and my motion wonky as the very marrow of my bones was captured by her seizures.
We stood panting, my head now leaning against the wall and her hands making swirls beneath my shirt and pressing a delicate ascent up each notch of my spine. When I stood back to observe her, the searching smile on her face told me that she had just experienced an unexpected and substantial pleasure.
We half collapsed on my bed, both sets of undergarments around our respective ankles, staring up at the ceiling as Lovestruck, with a broomstick, made us aware of the depravity we’d alerted him to. We giggled and she stroked my jaw.
‘You must leave London,’ she said. ‘It is not safe. Even here.’
I shook my head.
‘I’ve told Wild that I’m again visiting an aunt in Farnborough. I must return tomorrow.’
I hadn’t taken a dram and could say nothing in return. She laid her face against my chest. Her throat vibrated as she spoke.
‘I’ve had more practice than I care to admit,’ she said.
‘In ways of the flesh. But I can’t count any of them as pleasurable as the two minutes I just experienced. What just happened has never happened before.’
I squeezed her by reply.
‘I hear your silences,’ she continued. ‘Louder than any voice. And now I know your body speaks clearly too. Clear as day.’
That afternoon at a victualhouse we sat by the window over leek and mince pies and sugared coffee, with my notebook between us. She leaned over the table, one of her hands wrapped around her mug, watching eagerly as I wrote sentences. It must have been an effect of love, but the sharing
of our mutual histories was now an exquisitely rich topic of discussion. There wasn’t much that wasn’t exquisite. When tears gemmed in her eyes remembering her final ejection from the St Giles parish-house at age twelve, I shed some of my own and likewise, while divulging my family’s penurious circumstances following my father’s death, she reached over and took both my hands with motherly attention. Our histories, our surroundings, our bodies; they all simmered with fresh and fragile intensity.
Twilight cast a golden diagonal across York Way as we slowly returned to Lovestruck’s apartment. Her hand was slipped into the crook of my arm. First love – the only I have known – is equally felt in the surrounding world; the orange and blue sky hummed, the earth supported our feet, the chilly air embraced us.
‘Jack, you must listen to me,’ she pleaded, with her eyes on the road. ‘You must leave London. Go to France or Scotland.’
I stopped, pulled out the notebook and wrote:
Bessie, unless you’re coming with me, I will go nowhere.
‘In time I can join you. But not yet. Wait for me in Paris.’
I circled my last line, shaking my head.
Her eyes hovered upon the words and then went out to the horizon.
‘Let us enjoy our time together,’ she said, heavily.
I suppose London was a craving that neither of us could quit.
Back in my apartment, I set the fire and took a bottle of wine to our bedside, where we delved into pleasures once more. Bessie was determined to reproduce her ejaculation, which she did once more by touching herself while I was inside her. We lay in a silent and deep contentment, watching the shadows dance across the ceiling and listening to the flicker and crackle of the wood, until we drifted to a deep and deserved sleep, waking briefly in the middle of the night to fuck once more.
The following morning I watched Bessie dress herself from my place in bed. Only one who has loved an older woman will know the allure of delicately lined eyes. Of patient affection. Of little matching calluses where the shoes dig in. As she clasped the hooks of her dress and rolled stockings up her legs, she spoke to me of that most unwanted topic, Jonathan Wild, and the latest developments in his schemes. He was planning to marry himself into the House of Lords and buy impunity from his wicked crimes. Apparently there was a growing revolt within his ranks. Blueskin was enraged over my capture at the Blue Boar and Bessie sensed that he plotted a revenge.
‘I have a question of you,’ she asked, interrupting herself.
I nodded.
‘There is a ledger. Wild’s personal journal. It lists all of his corruptions. He keeps it inside the belly of a strange purple toy.’
I waited.
‘If I can get my hands on it, it would be an insurance. But it would need to be done at night, with the skills that only you possess.’
I deliberated. I had no intention to ever go anywhere near Jonathan Wild again. In fact, I was quite done with robbing and housebreaking altogether. With a great reluctance, I made this known to her. As she read my words, the space between us shifted like a draught that had thrust the shutters open. Her lips tightened.
‘I will do it myself,’ she said, to finalise the matter. ‘With that ledger he will never dare harm me.’
And with this last word – an injurious substitute for us – I recognised that our romance was much like an early spring day, filled with all the promise of summer, but upon the descent of the sun, as cold and miserable as the deep of winter. We were running two concurrent loves. We were twins, born from a moment and cleft for diverging futures.
I walked her to a waiting fly that she climbed abruptly, pulling her dresses in and announcing a promise of returning quite soon. I waved from the street, watching her rattle away.
The ensuing loneliness was unbearable. Sykes and Quilt visited. But even their company wouldn’t return me to good spirits. I was sick. I paced about my rooms and through the lanes of Kentish Town, arguing with my doubts. Bessie’s pleasures were true, her eyes were true, her confidences were true. Weren’t they?
The gin was quick to take me. I sunk into its sickening river. In a stupor, some three evenings later, I went by coach to Barbican, broke into Wild’s rooms and stole the purple pheasant he called King Richard. Inside the strange toy, sure enough, was Wild’s ledger, coded with names. Knowing it wasn’t safe with me, I gave it to a trusted source, someone as far removed from Wild as I could think.
Three weeks later, waking to a monstrous headache, Lovestruck announced that the lady was again here to see me. The chandler avoided my eyes.
Before I had a chance to assess a jump from the window, Bessie was in my room, tears in her eyes, with three strongarms following.
‘I begged you to leave London,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I wanted you safe.’
I didn’t recognise the men.
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ I heard her say as my teeth hit the floorboards like dice.
There was the unmistakable crackle of Wild’s throaty voice. My fingers were placed on a brick, and one by one, shattered with the sharp end of a roofing hammer.
‘His legs too,’ Wild commanded. ‘There will be no more escaping.’
‘P-p-p-please,’ I cried.
But the men were dutiful. They set the brick between the bones of my two ankles, and with a mighty swing, snapped my left and then my right foot almost clear from my ankle. I passed out momentarily, soon awoken as I was dragged down the stairs, my heels clattering after me like things not my own.
Through my watering eyes I caught a glimpse of Bessie on the landing, two hands over her mouth. With a great summoning of strength I bequeathed her all I had left, which was a smile.
WILD
My fate is a fortunate one
November 1724
When King Richard and the notebook were stolen from my offices – locks so expertly dismantled it could only have been Sheppard – I knew that a disease grew in the heart of my inner coterie. I set about overturning the rooms of all the people I trusted viz. Quilt, Sykes, Blueskin and Bessie.
‘You are my trusted partner,’ said I, when she stormed into my rooms.
‘Says the man who has torn the lining of every one of my dresses.’
‘Do you see what has been taken?’ said I, pointing to where King Richard hung. ‘There are only two people on earth who know the significance of that notebook. And, dear Bessie, do you know who they are?’
She put her hands upon her hips.
‘You are one. And I am the other.’
Bessie was unmoved. Finnegan Mahoney, the fiercest of my new Irish, stood behind.
‘And so you believe me responsible?’
‘Well, there wouldn’t have been much benefit in me stealing it.’
‘Do you not recognise what is happening around you?’
‘What’s that, Bessie?’
‘The city has gone from fearing you to loathing you. Your own men included.’
‘And shall I count you among them?’
‘Jonathan, I expect you’ve made up your mind on that account. It has been a long time since I’ve been capable of changing your opinion.’
I couldn’t deny that her comment was true. My mind was made up.
‘Your dear, vestal Isobel and her cockeyed family,’ continued Bessie, ‘are your principal concern. You have neglected your business – our business – and now you wish to lay the blame here.’
She gestured to the space around her feet.
‘You have always been a wise and cunning accomplice,’ answered I. ‘From the moment we met in Covent Garden. You in your frilly yellow dress, with the blackbirds swirling above. You were able to cozen me then, just as you’re doing now. But then, Bessie …’ I leaned forward and rubbed my brow. ‘Then, I stood to gain some benefit; a brief moment of pleasure, the prospect of love perhaps. But now, Bessie, now what am I to gain from your lies?’
‘I have not uttered a single falsehood.’
‘But what have you omitted?’
She stood, unmoved and resolute.
I slapped the table. ‘That notebook, in the wrong hands, will see ruin to everything. You included.’
Her eyes darted around the room. ‘I do not have the notebook, Jonathan.’
‘Finnegan,’ called I, turning away. ‘Begin with an inconsequential finger.’
I’m not certain if I’d have gone through with it and thankfully didn’t need to – once the cleaver was raised over her splayed fingers Bessie made her admission. I was sorry to smell the shit that she released in her moment of terror.
‘You’ve become a greater success than I ever estimated,’ said Bessie to my back. I turned. A puddle of piss gathered around her shoes. She trembled, but her voice was steady. ‘Though I question, Jonathan Wild, what you’re so determined to get now?’
I folded my arms.
‘I first reckoned it was a title. Marriage too. But I was wrong. You’re not determined for these.’
‘What, then, am I determined for?’
‘Ruin, Jonathan. You’re determined to be ruined.’
Finnegan Mahoney, who still had Bessie’s hand spread over the table, wheezed.
‘We’ll see who’s ruined,’ said I, finally. ‘For I suspect it isn’t me.’
The following day I was sorry to have The Lad so brutally fractured. So too, Quilt, who had a bill of rent for the Kentish Town rooms in his trousers, and his accomplice Hell-and-Fury who would soon be sent to the gallows less three fingers. The whole matter was a downright shame, but at least, now concluded. The notebook would be recovered, Harley would be satisfied and I still had Blueskin by my side.
My fate, for some reason, was a very fortunate one.
DEFOE
Fortune is like glass; it glitters then it shatters
November 1724
The rent is only two shillings per week. Fosco’s Alehouse is immediately beneath. From his window he looks directly to the hulking premises of Gould’s Fishery. On either side of Gould’s are other similar processing facilities. From midday the alehouse fills with fishermen. Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese. Defoe hasn’t seen a woman in days. Sitting at his window, he watches wagons slotted with barrels of oysters, kippers, sardines, cod and lobsters come and go from Gould’s driveway. The smell is pervasive; he has awoken many times from dreams of submersion. The fishermen get drunk so fast that the alehouse is often closed by midnight, with none left able to stand. To the early squawk of gulls and pipers, the street’s bodies squirm awake, stagger back inside Fosco’s for a breakfast sherry. Defoe is polite and minds his business. To the Billingsgaters, he is like a distant hill or a twilit horizon; the one sober objectivity to the scene.
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