Morgan's Run

by Colleen McCullough

  Thrown off balance by this cow-hearted surrender, Richard sat on the edge of the bed wondering what to do now. He had envisioned Trevillian fighting back, resisting, daring him to do his worst—why had he envisioned that? Because of memories of the slim, crisp excise defrauder stripped in the moonlight of his fancy clothes and fancy manners? But that, he realized now, was a Trevillian in complete control of a situation. The man had no genuine sinew, he was a fraud in every way.

  “ ’Tis a fair offer, Richard,” said Willy Insell timidly.

  “Very well,” Richard said, and got off the bed. “Dress yourself, Ceely, ye look ridiculous.”

  Having scrambled any old how into his plush jade green outfit embroidered in peacock blue, Trevillian followed Richard into the back room and sat down at Annemarie’s desk. Hopeful that he would see a share in Richard’s windfall, Willy Insell followed; what Willy did not realize was that Richard had no intention of cashing any note of hand. All Richard wanted was to make the fellow sweat over the next few days at the prospect of losing £500.

  The note of hand for £500 was made payable to Richard Morgan of Clifton, and signed “Jno. Trevillian.”

  Richard studied it, tore it up. “Again, Ceely,” he said. “Sign it with all your wretched names, not half of them.”

  At the top of the stairs the temptation was too much; Richard applied the toe of his shoe to Trevillian’s meager buttocks and sent him pitching down with a roll and a somersault, the noise of his body when it struck the flimsy board partition echoing like thunder. By the time he reached the tiny square of hall, Trevillian was yelling at the top of his lungs. No cool excise defrauder now! He tugged at the door and fell into the lane, weeping and howling, there to be succored by all the neighbors.

  Richard shot the bolt and went up the stairs to Annemarie, but without Willy Insell, who scuttled down into his cellar.

  She had not moved. Her eyes followed Richard as he crossed to the bed and picked up the hammer again.

  “I ought to kill you,” he said tiredly.

  She shrugged. “But you will not, Richard. It is not in you, even with the rum.” A smile tugged at her mouth. “Ah, but Ceely believed for a moment that you would. A surprise for that one, so confident, so full of himself, so fond of complicated schemes.”

  He might have fastened upon this remark as betraying a more intimate knowledge of Ceely Trevillian than a chance encounter in a bed, but someone was pounding on the front door. “Now what?” he asked, and went downstairs. “Yes?” he called.

  “Mr. Trevillian wants his watch back,” said a man’s voice.

  “Tell Mr. Trevillian that he can have his watch back after I have had satisfaction!” Richard roared through the bolted door. “He wants his watch back,” he said as he re-entered the bedroom.

  The watch was still lying on the window-sill, though the fob and purse had gone.

  “Give it back,” said Annemarie suddenly. “Throw it out the window to him, please.”

  “I’m damned if I will! He can have it back, but when I am good and ready.” He picked it up and examined it. “What a conceit! Steel. All the go, top of the trees, very dapper.” The watch went into his greatcoat pocket alongside the note of hand.

  “I am out of here,” he said, feeling very sick.

  She was off the bed in an instant, throwing on a dress, shoving her bare feet into shoes. “Richard, wait! Willy, Willy, come and help me!” she called.

  Willy appeared as they reached the bottom of the stairs, face dismayed. “Here, Richard, what are ye going to do? Leave be!”

  “If it is Ceely ye’re worried about, there is no need,” said Richard, stepping into the lane and inhaling fresh air deeply. “He ain’t here now. The performance stopped two minutes ago.”

  He set off toward Brandon Hill, Annemarie on one side of him and Willy on the other, three vague outlines in the pitch darkness of a place not lit by any lamps.

  “Richard, what will happen to me if you go?” Annemarie asked.

  “I care not, madam. I did ye the honor of allowing Ceely to think ye were my wife, but I’d not have the likes of you to wife, and that is the truth. What will change for ye? Ye’re still in employment, and Ceely and I between us have seen to it that your reputation is pure.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Pure? Madam, ye’re a black-hearted whore.”

  “What about me?” Willy asked, thinking of £500.

  “I will be at the Cooper’s Arms. With the Excise case still coming up, we have to stick to each other.”

  “Let us see ye over the hill,” Willy offered.

  “No. Take madam back to her house. It is not safe.”

  Thus they parted in the night, one man and the woman returning to Clifton Green Lane, the other man striding off along the Brandon Hill footpath, heedless of its dangers. Mrs. Mary Meredith stopped outside her front door, glad she had arrived, but wondering at the fearlessness of the walker, whose companions had left him. They had been talking in low voices and had seemed on excellent terms, but who they were she had no idea. Their faces were invisible on this late September evening.

  Too empty to be sick, Richard stumbled home feeling the rum far more than he had in the heat of that confrontation. What a business! And what was he going to say to his father?

  “But at least I can say that the fire is out,” he ended a letter to Mr. James Thistlethwaite the next day, which was the last day of September, 1784. “I do not know what came over me, Jem, save that the fellow I met inside myself I do not like—bitter, vengeful and cruel. Not only that, but I find myself in possession of the two articles I want least in the world—a steel watch and a note of hand for £500. The first I will return as soon as I can bear to set eyes upon Ceely Trevillian’s face and the second I will never present to his bank for payment. When I return the watch I will tear it up under his nose. And I curse the rum.

  “Father sent a man over to Clifton for my stuff, so I have not set eyes on Annemarie, nor will I ever again. False from hair of head to hair of—I will not say it. What a fool I have been! And at six-and-thirty years of age. My father says I should have gone through an experience like Annemarie at one-and-twenty. The older the fool, the bigger the fool, is how he put it with his usual grace. Still, he is an excellent man.

  “The business has made me understand much about myself I had no inkling of. What shames me is that I have betrayed my little son—thought not a scrap about him or his fate from the time I met Annemarie until today, when I woke to find her spell no longer upon me. Maybe a man has to have one fling of a sexual sort. But how have I offended God, that He should choose this time of loss and grief to try me in such a horrible way?

  “Please write, Jem. I can understand that it might be very difficult to write in the aftermath of our news about William Henry, but we would all like to hear from you, and worry at your silence. Besides, I need your words of wisdom. In fact, I am in dire need of them.”

  But if Mr. James Thistlethwaite intended to reply, his letter had not reached the Cooper’s Arms by the 8th of October, when two sober-looking men in drab brown suits walked into the tavern.

  “Richard Morgan?” asked the one in the lead.

  “Aye,” said Richard, emerging from behind the counter.

  The man came close enough to him to put his right hand on Richard’s left shoulder. “Richard Morgan, I hereby arrest ye in the name of His Majesty George Rex on charges laid by Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian.”

  “William Insell?” he asked then.

  “Oh! Oh!” squeaked Willy, cowering in his corner.

  Again the hand on the shoulder. “William Insell, I hereby arrest ye in the name of His Majesty George Rex on charges laid by Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian. Come with us, please, and do not try to make trouble. There are six more of us outside the door.”

  Richard held out his hand to his father, standing thunderstruck, and opened his mouth to speak before he realized that he had no idea what to say.

  The bailiff dug him sharpl
y between the shoulder blades with the same hand he had lain upon Richard’s shoulder. “Not a word, Morgan, not a word.” He stared around the silent tavern. “If ye want Morgan and Insell, ye’ll find them in the Bristol Newgate.”

  PART TWO

  From

  October of 1784

  until

  January of 1786

  The Briftol Newgate was two buildings down from Wafborough’s brass foundry on Narrow Wine Street. Richard and Willy Insell in their midst, the eight bailiffs made short work of the walk and entered the prison through a massively barred door not unlike a portcullis. A narrow passageway with an opening on either side was Richard’s first sight of Newgate’s interior; hardly pausing, the head bailiff hustled them through the left-hand portal with a shove from behind by his henchmen, who remained outside.

  “Prisoners Morgan and Insell!” he barked. “Sign, please.”

  A man lounging on a chair behind a table reached for the two pieces of paper the bailiff presented. “And where d’ye expect me to put them?” he asked, signing each paper with a large X.

  “Your business, Walter, not mine,” said the bailiff smugly. “They are on a writ of habeas corpus,” he added, walking out.

  Willy was weeping copiously; Richard stood dry-eyed and composed. The shock was wearing off, he was able to feel and think again, and knew himself unsurprised. What was he charged with? When would he find out? Yes, he had Ceely’s watch and note of hand, but he had told the person in the lane that Ceely would get his watch back, and he had not taken the note of hand to Ceely’s bank. Why hadn’t he thought?

  Overcrowding would help him be acquitted. The practical men of Bristol’s Bench were prone these days to come to an agreement with any accused who could marshal the funds to make restitution, pay something extra by way of damages. Though he would be loaded down for the rest of his life with a debt only another war and more guns could pay off, he knew that his family would not desert him.

  “A penny a day for bread,” the gaoler named Walter was saying, “until ye’re tried. If ye’re convicted, it goes up to tuppence.”

  “Starvation,” said Richard spontaneously.

  The gaoler came around his desk and struck Richard across the mouth so hard that his lip split. “No smart remarks, Morgan! In here ye live and die according to my rules and at my convenience.” He lifted his head and bellowed, “Shift yerselves, ye bastards!”

  Two men carrying bludgeons rushed into the room.

  “Chain ’em,” said Walter, rubbing his hand.

  Staunching the blood with his shirt cuff, Richard walked with the blubbering Willy Insell across the passageway and into the room on the right-hand side. It looked a little like a saddler’s shop, except that the multitude of straps hanging all over its walls were made of iron links, not leather.

  Leg irons were considered sufficient in the Bristol Newgate; Richard stood while the sorry-looking individual responsible for this storehouse of misery kitted him out with his fetters. The two-inch-wide band which confined his left ankle was locked, not riveted, and it was joined to the similar band on his right ankle by a two-foot length of chain. This permitted him to walk at a shuffle, but not to step out or run. When Willy panicked and tried to fight, he was beaten to the ground with bludgeons. His split lip still bleeding, Richard said and did nothing. The remark to Walter the gaoler was the last time, he vowed, that he would court abuse. It was back to his days at Colston’s—sit quietly, stand quietly, do whatever was bidden quietly, attract nobody’s attention.

  The passageway terminated in another barred gate; a keeper unlocked it with a massive key and the two new prisoners, Morgan and Insell, were thrust through it into Hell. Which was a very big room, its stone walls oozing moisture so consistently yet insidiously that in many places the surface had sprouted long limestone icicles gone black and furred with the soot of the factoried Froom. Not a stick of furniture. A flagged floor filthy with the slicks of age and ammoniac human emissions. A crowded mass of leg-ironed prisoners, all male. They mostly sat on the floor with their legs stretched out in front of them; some moved aimlessly about, too leached of life to lift their burdened feet over the legs of some other wretch, who continued to sit as if he had not felt the blow of the walker’s chain. To someone accustomed to Bristol mud, the stench was familiar—rot, muck, excrement. Just stronger from poor ventilation.

  The only purposeful activity was going on around an arched opening in the far end of the room; though he had never been inside the Bristol Newgate, Richard deduced that through the aperture lay the prison taproom. In there, those who could scrape up the coins necessary would be served with rum, gin, beer. Hearing Dick and Cousin James-the-druggist talk had given Richard an idea of what the Newgate might be like, and he had visualized it as boiling with fights over money and booze, bread and property. But, he understood now, the gaolers were too shrewd to let that happen. None of these men had the strength to fight. They were starving, and a good proportion of them were also drunk on empty bellies, drooling and humming tunelessly, sitting with their legs stretched out, far away from care.

  Willy would not leave him. Willy stuck to him like a burr. No matter which direction Richard took, there was Willy shuffling in his wake, weeping. I shall go mad. I cannot bear it. And yet I will not go back to rum. Or take to gin as cheaper. After all, this hideous ordeal will be over in some months—however long it takes for the courts to get around to our turn, mine and Willy’s. Why must he howl so? What good does that do him?

  At the end of an hour he was weary; the iron bands around his ankles were beginning to hurt. Finding a vacant piece of wall big enough to accommodate him and his shadow, he lowered himself to the ground and stretched his legs out in front of him with a sigh of relief, understanding immediately why the prisoners adopted this posture. It took the weight off the fetters, let their backs rest on the floor. An examination of his thick knitted stockings revealed that after a mere hour of walking, the fabric was already showing signs of wear and tear. Another reason why these people did not move around.

  He was thirsty. A pipe poked through the Froom wall and sent a steady trickle of water into a horse trough; a tin dipper on a chain served as a drinking vessel. Even as he stared at it, one of the ambulating wretches paused to piss into the trough. Which, he noted, was situated right next to four naked privies optimistically deemed sufficient for the needs of over 200 men. If Cousin James-the-druggist is right, he thought, drinking that water will kill me. This room is stuffed with sick men.

  As if the very name had the power to work a miracle, Cousin James-the-druggist appeared in the barred doorway from the passage; Dick was with him, hanging back.

  “Father! Cousin James!” he called.

  Eyes distended in horror, they picked their way over to him.

  For the first time in anyone’s memory, Dick fell to his knees and broke down. Richard sat patting his heaving shoulders and looked across them at the apothecary.

  “We have brought you a flagon of small beer,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, producing it out of a sack. “There is food too.”

  Willy had cried himself into an exhausted doze, but woke when Richard shook him. Never had anything tasted as good as that beer! Passing the unstoppered jug to Willy, Richard reached into the sack and found bread, cheese and a dozen fresh apples. In a corner of his mind he had wondered if perhaps the sight of these goodies would bring that apathetic throng to a fever of clawing hands and bared teeth, but it did not. They were truly lost.

  Regaining his composure, Dick wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt. “This is awful! Awful!”

  “It will not last forever, Father,” said Richard, unsmiling; he did not want to split the lip again and alarm Dick even more. “In time my trial will come up and I will be freed.” He hesitated. “Am I able to go bail?”

  “I do not yet know,” said Cousin James-the-druggist briskly, “but I am going to see Cousin Henry-the-lawyer first thing in the morning, and then we will beard the
lion in the Prosecutions Office at the courthouse. Be of good cheer, Richard. The Morgans are well known in Bristol and ye’re a Free Man in good standing. I know the popinjay who is pressing the charges—usually to be found ee-awing in the vicinity of the Tolzey like the donkey he is.”

  “I do not know how the news spread so far so fast,” said Dick, “but before we left to find you here Senhor Habitas turned up. His eldest daughter is married to an Elton, and Sir Abraham Isaac Elton is a very good friend. He said you may be certain that Sir Abraham Isaac will be the presiding judge at your trial, and while he may serve ye a hideous homily on the temptations of a Lilith, the charges will not stick. Everything depends upon the advice a judge gives to his jury. This Ceely Trevillian is despised—every man on the jury will recognize him instantly and laugh himself sick.”

  The two Morgans did not stay long, and shortly after their departure Richard became profoundly glad of it. The ordeal and the small beer were working cruelly on his bowels. He had to sit on a filthy privy seat with his breeches and underdrawers around his knees, on full view. Not that anyone cared save he. Nor was there a breech-clout to wipe himself with, drop into the soapy water of the laundering bucket; he had to get to his feet and pull up his underdrawers over the last of a runny mess, his eyes closed against the most appalling shame he had ever experienced. From that moment on, he was more conscious of his own smell than of the ghastly fug around him.

  Nightfall saw them shifted from this common-room up a flight of steps to the men’s dormitory, another enormous room, and endowed with too few pallets to accommodate those in residence. Figures lay on some, apparently had so lain all day in the throes of fever; one or two would never move again. But as he and Willy were new and therefore quick, they found a pair of vacant stretchers and took possession. No mattresses, no sheets, no pillows, no blankets. And stiff with the dried remnants of dysentery and vomit.