The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  The gentleman may call, if he is not satisfied on some point. I earnestly desire that compleat justice be done, & be seen to be done, tho’ no punishment may adequately satisfy a mother’s grief.

  After much consideration and reviewing these few lines, William presented himself at Lady Tarwell’s place. He found himself in a dull parlour, a room starved of light and wholesome airs, closed up and dim, with black cloth at the windows, and all the cabinets shut, and ornaments and signs of pleasure removed for the icy lady who waited for him. Proud, watchful, upright was Lady Tarwell. Haughty in her desolation, she greeted him with her bony hand.

  “You come to plead for clemency for your friend,” she announced, before William could frame any remark.

  “I come,” said William, “to plead the innocence of a man I know to be unjustly convicted.”

  A strange expression, by turns keen, hungry, and vindictive, animated Lady Tarwell’s face. “Does he suffer?”

  “My Lady, the Bellstrom Gaol is a barbarous place.”

  “Is he in fear of his life?” pressed that lady.

  “He is surrounded by criminals and cutthroats. He has been threatened with bodily harm and forced to defend himself.”

  “I am glad of it. Let him be murdered in his cell then, for the offence against my son!” Nothing can communicate the awful, arch triumph of these words.

  William pinched his lips and shifted his feet. “A mother’s grief—” he began.

  “You, sir, know nothing of this mother’s grief.” The words fell hollow in the airless room. “My son was a fool and a wastrel. He had fallen into low and profligate ways. He was a gambler and a scoundrel, and a habitué of coarse company. But I indulged him, as a mother always indulges her favourite. I assumed his early debts. My son came of an old and noble line. He would have risen above youthful folly and indiscretion and proved worthy of my affection and trust, if he had not been cut down. Therefore, do not speak to me of a mother’s love or loss or anguish.”

  “I only mean,” said William, “that grief has blinded you to the circumstances. Mr. Grainger is tainted by suspicion. There is no proof against him, but you have mobilised all your connections, influence, wealth against him.”

  “You think I have put this judgement upon him?”

  “Respectfully, ma’am, who else?”

  Afterwards, he would shudder to recall the proud, unmitigating tones of the reply. “I would not stir a finger against such a contemptible object, if the proofs were not already there. I have set no word of mine, no influence, no inducements, to alter the outcome of that hideous trial. Your associate was condemned out of his own efforts and corrupted testimony. Do you not think that a mother would desire only clean retribution against the actual, proven murderer? Could you convince me otherwise, Mr. Quillby, bring me the real perpetrator of this loathsome crime, I would not spare my wrath. But do not accuse me of peddling base influence against an innocent. My grief is complete to this degree: I am satisfied only in fact.”

  The interview was concluded; the maid was called, and Quillby hastened from the shadows to the opened door and the bustling street, as from the shadow of the sepulchre.

  THE BELLSTROM was in an uproar, for on this day the sentences of the court were carried out, and there was an execution to perform. The gallows were made ready in Gales Square; likewise, the brands and the scourge, the whipping-post and the tumbrel. An awful thing to consider, these visible emblems of punishment, raised up in imitation of the greatness of the law, and yet showing only its meanness, calculated to produce an instructive terror, yet calling forth merely misery and fear, which in their turn engender defiance, so that in some portions of the gaol there was every show of liveliness and tainted good cheer, and harsh songs could be heard, mixed with the groans.

  These considerations were not alien to Thaddeus Grainger, resting in his cell. The condemned man, one of Dirk Tallow’s crew, had discharged a pistol into the breast of a coachman. By accident, he said: we are always brought to these extremes by accident. Grainger reflected that he was spared the same fate by chance or station, or by some subversion of the law he could not detect. Elsewise, he would also be dispatched to the gallows, though he was set down merely to imprisonment before death, as we are all held condemned, and granted merely this stay of execution.

  The letter in his hand from William, the report from Cassie Redruth, whispered urgently in the very shadow of the cell door, stirred confusion in him. Lady Tarwell was not his persecutor, according to William; it was not within her pride and delicacy to conspire against him. And yet, this man, Brock, had sought out and manipulated the testimony of the decisive witness against him, though if Thurber could still be believed, Massingham had walked with a stranger on the fatal night, a curious, limping stranger that none had yet discovered. It was all confusion, all still an inkling of some darker purpose guided against him. In these thoughts, unwholesome in their uncertainty and vague in import, Grainger passed the hours.

  At the appointed time, those set down for punishment were called and brought forth. They came, shivering and miserable from the lowest cells, dips and drunks, rioters, vagrants, petty thieves, and whores. The murderer himself, in cleaner linens and a gaudier coat than he had ever worn in his life, was guided by two soldiers. The yard, every gap between the pillars, every window and walkway, was crowded, as though the prison had heaved up all its subterranean life. A few waved bright strips of cloth and cheered, a few mocked and hooted. The murderer called cheerfully enough to his friends, leered at the children in the crowd, and glowered at his enemies. The gatehouse portal was opened wide, and the cart, the soldiers, the shuffling line of prisoners in chains, all departed. From the streets came the sound of cheering, at first lapping near at the walls of the gaol, and then retreating and growing fainter. The remaining prisoners appeared to have no will to return to their usual courses and abodes. Some time later, the sound of cheering was heard, some way from the prison walls. It swelled and retreated, raised itself to a pitch and frenzy, and then fell altogether.

  Swinge made free with the tap, and the beer and grog flowed steadily. A party was got up in the tap-room. Dirk Tallow himself, brought in on charges and set down for trial, was there to preside, and very finely he appeared to mourn his departed friend, in a red coat and thread-of-gold waistcoat. Other factions lurked in the corners, but the high tables were crowded with men and women in a sentimental frame. The raven, Roarke, flew free beneath the black beams and picked fragments of meat from the trestles.

  Grainger, driven from his cell by the din and oppressed by his own speculations, lingered against the wall, bemused, yet remote in thought amongst one or two of the other green hands.

  Dirk Tallow raised his tumbler, and the chamber quieted. Tallow was a handsome man, thick in chest and neck, with something bullish about the wide forehead and thrusting chin, with two deep dimples at the side. His nose was strong and broad, with a high bridge. He was flushed with drinking, but in nowise affected in speech, and his clear blue eyes were as fresh as the moors. A few men, of the more ragged sort, were ill-affected with Tallow’s proposal and muttered beneath their breaths and drew their tankards close with significant looks.

  “You there!” called Tallow, standing. “Will you not raise your drink?”

  It took but a moment for Grainger to perceive that this challenge was addressed to him.

  “I will, indeed,” he returned.

  “Will you not raise your drink,” Tallow repeated, as though this reply gave him no satisfaction, “to a finer man than many yet gathered here?” This, though said to Grainger, with a significant, glowering glance at the sulky factions of the company.

  “I will drink,” said Grainger coolly, “out of respect for the dead.”

  Tallow had no immediate reply to this but spared a glance for his table and drew himself somewhat more upright. “Do I not know you?” Still, with his bold eye on Grainger.

  “We are not acquainted, sir.”

  A s
neering half smile touched the highwayman’s lips. “I do know you—sir. Let us not dwell on introductions. I have seen you in the low town, about the river, at The Saracen’s Shield.”

  “I am not unfamiliar with that establishment,” owned Grainger, growing cautious, and conscious of the attention directed towards him from every part of the assembly.

  “Come, sirrah, you are too modest,” pressed Tallow, with an air of raillery. “You are that fellow who was brought up on the Steergate Murder.” A woman giggled behind him.

  “I know nothing of that deed,” said Grainger. “I wholeheartedly assert my innocence.”

  “Aye! We’re all innocent here. There is not a guilty man-jack among us.” There was a burst of coarse laughter, and Tallow warmed to his theme. “Naught here but your honest twitchers, pads, and nimmers, your divers and trulls, all as innocent as the day is long. The guilty ones is all outside.”

  This raised such a storm of hilarity that Grainger, at some distance from the high table, could make no immediate reply. And yet, he did not retire but waited for the lull.

  “I do not quite take your meaning,” said Grainger, composed, and yet with something compressed about his stance.

  Tallow appeared to have forgotten Grainger, as, putting his tumbler down, he had forgotten his toast. He looked around, shrugged, glanced to the end of the table, and it was the man seated there who replied to Grainger.

  This was the elderly, clerical figure whom Mr. Tyre had alluded to as Mr. Ravenscraigh. Grainger had marked him first in close conversation with the thief-taker Cassie had since spoken of, Brock. Ravenscraigh had a long, sardonic face, somewhat hollow in the cheeks and in the sides of the nose, scored by deep lines of concentration and hardship. He had been a tall man in his youth, and though stooped somewhat, was still tall and spare. He had been handsome, also, and an air of present command remained. The eyes were very piercing, clear in thought and apprehension, with some trace of dark humour, some trace of secrecy, some trace of pride, and singular intelligence. There was nothing about him that spoke of dissipation; he was neatly dressed, though his black coat was rather worn out at the elbows, and yet he had also a retiring, dusty, dry bearing, which kept him from plain notice.

  “You are new to our little realm,” he said to Grainger, “and therefore unfamiliar with our habits. We have all of us, everyone here, felt the arbitrariness of the law. We do not, therefore, enquire after, nor offer, proofs of innocence or guilt.”

  “I am obliged to you,” said Grainger. “Nevertheless, I insist. I am innocent, upon my word.”

  This precipitated a renewed round of hilarity.

  The elderly prisoner tilted his head, and said with a droll smile, “Your word, sir? And pray, what is the weight of your word in this company?”

  Grainger took a step forward and did not waver. “I, sir, am a gentleman.”

  The other paused and then replied, with a gravity and an irony that could not be divided: “Indeed. Then it must suffice.”

  Wearying of this diversion, Dirk Tallow pounded his tin-cup upon the bruised surface of the table, and this sport was taken up by the whole company, as Grainger retired to a scrap of bench amidst the uproar. The toast was called again, but now no one minded how, or for what, they drank.

  CHAPTER IX.

  Humble Requests.

  IN THE LATTER PART of that winter, when the daylight hours themselves seemed weary of the season, reluctant to arrive and anxious to depart, the whole of the Bellstrom yielded to the miasma of the cold. On the shelf outside Grainger’s pitiful slot of a window, the snow had gathered and was slowly condensing into ice. Grainger read in his cell, and from time to time he would stir to rise and prowl across his cell and back again, beating at his sides, blowing on his fingers, and stamping his feet in an effort to maintain both his thoughts and the circulation of his blood.

  Therefore, when there came a timorous knock on his cell door and he rose to find Mr. Tyre there, he was not displeased.

  The old man was bound, as usual, in scarves and rags, and stood, trembling from the cold, on the threshold.

  “Come in, Mr. Tyre,” said Grainger. “It is little warmer within than without, but at least the light is better.”

  “Thank you, thank you.”

  The old man shuffled a few steps inside but seemed reluctant to come any farther. He peered blearily for a few moments at the paper and cheap pens bundled up on the little table that served Grainger as desk and dining room.

  “You have some request, I perceive,” resumed Grainger, momentarily.

  “You are acute, Mr. Grainger. Most acute. You have come to the matter at hand, yes.”

  “What is the matter?” pressed Grainger.

  “You have made yourself known, sir. You have been noticed.”

  “By Dirk Tallow? I don’t give a fig for him!”

  “He is much more dangerous than the common ruffians of the gaol. You would be wise to cross his path as little as possible.” Mr. Tyre rubbed his fingertips distractedly. “I have need, that is, there is someone who has need of the services of a gentleman.”

  “If I may be of assistance,” said Grainger.

  “Yes, of course. Only, I do not know quite how to frame the request.”

  “Perhaps, if you were to take me to your friend,” hinted Grainger, “the matter could be explained there.”

  “You are correct. There is no great difficulty, I assure you, for a gentleman of your character, indeed.”

  “Then lead the way,” said Grainger, now not a little perplexed.

  They went out: the tall young man and the hunched, trembling old prisoner. The stale stone passages were nearly deserted, but haunted, as always, by prison sounds, coughs and scraping feet. Mr. Tyre led Grainger ever downwards. The old man had a wonderful capacity for finding out narrow little stairs and neglected archways that crept down into the worn vaults of the gaol. Vermin scampered along the walls and seemed ill-inclined to depart at the approach of mere men.

  At the bottom of a tight, descending spiral staircase, so close that Grainger was obliged to turn to his side, lest his shoulders catch on the stonework, Grainger stopped his guide for a moment.

  “Mr. Tyre, you recall the elderly gentleman who spoke on that occasion in the tap-room. You have pointed him out to me before.”

  “Yes,” came the whispered reply. “Mr. Ravenscraigh.”

  “Mr. Ravenscraigh sometimes converses with the thief-taker, Mr. Brock.”

  “Mr. Ravenscraigh is greatly esteemed for his knowledge of the Bells.”

  “I should like to make the acquaintance of Mr. Ravenscraigh.”

  An evasive, downcast look passed over Mr. Tyre’s face. “Perhaps it is time,” he said, “that you were introduced to the Eminence of the Bellstrom Gaol. Come along!”

  Both men went into a lightless antechamber that gave way to a medieval stone arch. Beyond the arch was an even greater chamber, barrel-vaulted, dark, sprawling. The eye could scarcely perceive the mass of humanity that lay in there, borne down among the rows of wooden benches, weighted with heavy chains that ran through massive links set into the weeping walls. The stench of close habitation in a trapped space, of unclean bodies and hopeless breath, was more terrible than the darkness. The prisoners moaned and muttered and turned, like unclean spirits in a charnel house.

  “The common cells: the Writhans,” remarked Mr. Tyre.

  Grainger, a handkerchief to his mouth, hesitated in consternation and dread.

  “Come,” said the older man, “you have nothing to fear from these miserable souls.”

  They moved with cautious steps. Mr. Tyre made his way between the benches (where often one man lay on top of the wood, while another man lay beneath) towards a niche or hollow set into the back of the chamber. A man who had once been tall and even broad of shoulder, but was now haggard and emaciated, sprawled there. His hair and beard had grown, untrimmed and wild. He had around him filthy scraps of blankets hitched across his knees.

  �
��This is Jack Fallgrave. He was once a miller,” whispered Mr. Tyre.

  “What has brought him to this dreadful place?”

  “He is a simple debtor. Or say rather he was, for his debts are all discharged.”

  “I do not yet understand why I am here,” said Grainger.

  “I will make us known, and then we will explain.”

  Mr. Tyre bent forward, greeted the reclining man. After a few words, he beckoned Grainger forward, and he stooped to come within the shallow ceiling of the alcove.

  “I am, sir, heartily grateful that you have come,” said Fallgrave. His voice, though once deep, was now almost rotted through by vapours and bad airs.

  “If I may assist you in any fashion,” said Grainger, “I am at your service.”

  “You are the gentleman everyone is speaking of,” said Fallgrave. “It is evident in your speech and bearing.”

  “I had some position in society, which is presently lost to me,” admitted Grainger.

  “I need,” began Fallgrave, pausing only when his cough threatened, “I need to write a petition. It is a rightful, necessary petition. I have not the means to write it myself. I can neither read, nor write much past my own name, nor hire a law-writer, nor afford the pens and paper. It must be set out fairly and in a good hand, the hand of a gentleman.” He gestured towards Grainger, who retreated a little.

  “What is the petition?”

  “You have heard I was a debtor, sir.”

  “Mr. Tyre indicated as much.”

  A bitter smile touched the man’s lips. “I am discharged. My debts are paid. My creditors are satisfied and have been so this half-year.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Garnish, sir. Garnish. I cannot satisfy the gaoler’s fees. I cannot pay the cost of my confinement, and therefore Swinge keeps me here until I can find the means to satisfy him.”

  “It is scarcely believable,” admitted Grainger.

  The prisoner stirred and plucked weakly at the rags that covered him. “Even these fetters, as you know, have their price. This miserable pit is taken at a charge. I was a miller, sir. I could restore my fortunes outside of this place. My friends and family have removed all other debts, at a cost to themselves I cannot describe. But the gaoler binds me here for his fees.”