‘At least I have chosen it, sir,’ I replied, frowning at the familiar lecture. We had been locked in this same argument for years – ever since I had first dared to challenge him.
He propped his head in his hand, rubbing his forehead. ‘Foolish boy,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘This is not your choice. It is the devil guides you now; you have let him into your soul, with your drinking and gambling and debauchery. With your lies. I thought . . . I thought you had changed. You deceived us all, Thomas.’ He turned from the fire at last. He looked exhausted, his face gaunt and grey. For a moment I felt sorry for him – and ashamed for what I’d done. If I could just explain. If he would only listen.
‘Father . . .’
‘I thank God your mother is not alive to see this day.’
My mother. He should have known not to mention her. I don’t know how I stopped myself from striking him. We fought with words instead; accusations that left no chance for forgiveness, no possibility of return. I was a selfish, wilful child, set upon a one-way path to damnation. He was a cold-hearted hypocrite who dared to lecture me when he had married his own mistress. And worse. We both said much worse. The accusation that had always lurked in the shadows of every conversation, brought into the light at last. Which one of us was responsible. Which one of us had broken my mother’s heart.
‘Go, go, live your godless life,’ he called down the stairs as I stormed out of the vicarage for the last time, my sister Jane watching silent and ashen-faced. ‘And when you’re alone and penniless, rotting in a debtors’ gaol, do not come begging to me.’
And now his prediction had come to pass. I cursed the memory, spat the bitterness away and walked out into the prison.
The Marshalsea is an old gaol – centuries old. Its buildings are a peculiar hodgepodge, some brick, some timber, set in a quadrangle around a cobbled yard close to an acre in size. There were perhaps two dozen prisoners outside that first morning, men and women, some walking up and down in a distracted fashion, others talking and smoking and laughing, as if they had chanced to meet in the street. I watched them quietly in the shadow of the Lodge, settling my nerves and waiting for the best moment to step into the arena.
The Lodge gate was the only way in and out of the prison, unless you were suicidal enough to try scaling the walls. To my left was a two-storeyed timber house with bright yellow curtains and a low wooden fence about the door – the governor’s house, I discovered later. A tree shaded the windows – the only one in the prison and a mangled, sickly thing at that. Beyond the governor’s lodgings this west side of the prison was given up to a high wall crowned with iron spikes, where men played rackets.
The north wall was much longer and began with a terrace of three rundown houses. These, I learned, were the prison wards, with twenty large rooms in all. Most cells were occupied by at least three men – often twice or even three times that. The best rooms were at the front on the first floor; they were larger, and looked out into the yard. I could see a few pale faces at the windows, men smoking and drinking or staring dejectedly into thin air.
At the end of these three terraced buildings was a tall, narrow house, kept in a much better state than its neighbours. The turnkeys’ lodgings took up all of the ground-floor rooms while the prison chapel lay on the floor above, with a large window facing the yard. What God made of the view below I couldn’t say.
At the end of this north row stood a handsome brick building, five storeys high and wider than all its neighbours put together. It seemed to look down its nose at the rest of the prison, like a duke forced to live cheek by jowl with his peasants. A small crowd sheltered beneath its long, colonnaded porch, watching a game of backgammon.
On the far east wall lay a final block of prisoners’ quarters, meaner than those by the governor’s lodgings, with a sagging roof and cracked windows.
In short, it was not St James’ Palace; it was not even Soho. But there was a tree, and a game of backgammon, and no one was being murdered, as far as I could see. Indeed it reminded me of my old college, save for the iron spikes, and the hot stink of sweat and shit in the air. (Not that Oxford had been fragrant – all those old dons and lazy students cramped together, with no women to remind them to wash.) I straightened my jacket, stood a little taller, and strode into the yard with as much confidence as I could muster.
Then I turned to the south wall.
It stood twenty paces to my right, towering high above my head and stretching all the way down the long southern side of the yard like the armoured spine of some terrible beast. I had assumed it was the edge of the gaol, but now I looked more carefully, I was not so sure. There was a small, heavily barred door a little way down its flank and I had the sudden, intense suspicion that I was lucky to be on this side of it.
As I moved closer I found myself caught within its chill shadow and the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. Unlike the rest of the prison this wall was kept in excellent repair, solid and sheer. It would be near impossible to climb without a rope. I placed my hand against the stone; it felt smooth beneath my fingers, and cold as a corpse. I shivered. Was it my imagination, or was there another scent here, beneath the general filth of the prison? A thick, rotten stench, almost like . . .
I staggered back, my hand across my mouth.
‘You’ve smelled death before, then?’
I spun round to see a man of middling age sitting on a bench by the Lodge, smoking a pipe. There was a bottle resting at his side, and a tattered leather journal stuffed with loose papers and tied with a black ribbon. He was well-featured – handsome, even – but he cut an eccentric figure, still dressed in his banyan and a matching red velvet cap. The nightgown trailed along the cobbles as if it had been cut for a taller man, and he had been forced to roll up the sleeves. At first glance the effect was almost comical: the absent-minded gentleman scholar, unshaven, unkempt, wrapped up in his thoughts. I had met enough of those at Oxford; he had the clothes and bearing just right but his expression was too sharp – dark eyes watchful and alert under heavy black brows. He must have been sitting there for some time, studying me. Indeed, now I thought of it, he could well have heard my argument with Cross, and my exchange with Mrs Roberts.
I bowed, cautiously, and introduced myself.
He plucked off his cap and gave a deep, satirical bow in return. ‘And what a pleasure to meet you, Mr Hawkins,’ he said, the way a wolf might declare itself pleased to meet a small, trembling fawn. ‘Samuel Fleet.’
I blinked. His name seemed familiar somehow. ‘Do I know you, sir?’
A secretive smile spread slowly across his face. He stuffed his journal and his bottle somewhere deep within his robe, and tapped the stem of his pipe against my chest. ‘You need a drink,’ he said. And then he clapped me round the shoulder and pulled me away from the wall and its long, cold shadow.
The Tap Room stood to the right of the Lodge, as if it knew a man would always need a drink as soon as he entered the prison, and had decided to lie in wait for him there. It sold all the drink you would find in a regular tavern for twice the cost and half the taste. Wherever the profits had gone, it was not on the furnishings; the cane chair backs needed mending and the tables were infested with woodworm. One sharp sneeze and the entire room would collapse into splinters. The floor was sticky with spilt beer, the air tainted with the stink of cheap candles – pig fat, by the smell of it. Thank God for the thick fug of pipe smoke or it would have been unbearable.
It was only just past one o’clock but the room was already filled to the brim with drunken debtors and their guests. Most had gathered at the bar, where a young woman with butter-blonde hair was pouring drinks and holding court. The ribbons on her stomacher had come loose and she was almost spilling out of the top; artfully so, I thought. A snuff-pinch too respectable for Moll’s place, but playing the same game – just enough soft, creamy flesh on display to keep the customers happy and buying. Everyone seemed in excellent spirits; there was a great deal of laughter and
singing and shouts for more punch, more wine, more of everything. How it was all paid for, I couldn’t tell.
Samuel Fleet weaved his way through the crowd, nimble as a thief. I followed him, against my better instinct – I didn’t like the ugly, hostile looks he was drawing from the other prisoners, or the suspicious glances they awarded me as his companion. As he neared one group, two of the men – clearly brothers – gave him a black look, as if they would like to reach over and rip his head from his shoulders. The older one – a big man, solid as a prison wall – muttered a curse, and spat at his feet.
Fleet stopped sharp. He turned towards the man who’d cursed him and studied him silently. There was no anger in his eyes, only the cool, deadly concentration of a snake about to strike. The threat hung heavily in the air between them. In a moment there would be knives drawn – I could feel it.
‘Harry,’ the younger man hissed, breaking the spell. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘Come away for God’s sake.’ They left together, pushing their way through the crowds. Harry looked back once, over his shoulder. He was a head taller than Fleet and almost twice as broad – but there was fear in his eyes.
Fleet watched them go. Then he turned his gaze on me. ‘Do you wish to join them, Mr Hawkins?’ His lips curled into a smile, baring his teeth.
My mouth turned dry. My mind screamed run! run while you have the chance! But my feet stubbornly refused to move. He was dangerous company; that much was clear. But I knew in my bones that running from him would be a mistake. Turn your back on a man like Fleet and you could find a knife in it. I swallowed hard. ‘You promised me a drink, sir.’
Fleet laughed, pleased. He slapped me on the arm. ‘So I did.’
The other men fell back, relieved to return to their drinks without any trouble. As I passed them I heard one mutter, ‘Harry’s a fool. The devil’s killed a man for less.’
All the tables were filled bar one, positioned next to a narrow balcony overlooking the yard. It seemed odd that no one had taken it when the Tap Room was so full. Fleet settled into his chair with a proprietorial air.
‘They call it the Park,’ he said, tilting his chin towards the window. ‘The yard and these rooms by the Lodge. The gaol’s known as the Castle.’ He waved his pipe in a circle, as if taking in the whole prison. ‘Weak men often give foolish names to the things they fear. Makes them feel safe, I suppose.’ He smirked at me as if to say, but you and I, we are above such nonsense, are we not? He lit his pipe and took a deep draw. ‘They’ve given me a name,’ he muttered, smoke trailing from his lips. He had a strange, conspiratorial way of speaking, like a villain coming front of stage to let the audience in on his schemes.
I barely heard him. I should have been listening more carefully; I should have paid a lot more attention to Samuel Fleet that first day. But I was too busy peering out of the window. ‘I can see over the wall from here,’ I said, opening the window and slipping out on to the balcony to get a better view.
‘That,’ murmured Fleet, ‘is why no one sits here.’
On the other side of the wall was another yard and more buildings. More iron spikes, too – and bars at the windows. A prison within a prison. The yard was long and narrow – scarcely a quarter the width of the Park – and packed tight with prisoners, thin, tattered souls stumbling slowly round and round as if in a stupor. More still peered out of the windows or lay stretched out in the dirt.
A gust of wind blew up and I caught the sweet, sickly smell of rotting meat again. And then I realised why. Some of the figures laid out in the far corner were wrapped in sheets. Corpses, left out in the autumn sun. I counted four in total. One was half the size the rest. A child.
Behind me, at the bar, they were singing a drinking song. Someone had brought out a fiddle. They all had their backs to the window.
‘The Common Side,’ Fleet called from his seat, making me start and draw back. ‘Hell in epitome. Does it interest you, Mr Hawkins?’
I closed the window with a firm click. I thought I could still smell the corpse stink on my clothes – but it was just my imagination. ‘How can they live in such a foul way?’
‘They don’t. Not for long.’
‘Do you not care, sir?’
‘Not if I can possibly help it.’ He yawned and removed his cap, running his fingers across the short bristle of his scalp. I noticed with surprise that he was wearing what seemed to be a gold poesy ring on his left hand. Did this man have a wife? A family? Somehow this did not seem possible. ‘I’ll tell you what interests me, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trapped in this . . .’ he drummed his fingers, searching for the right word ‘. . . cesspit for eight months. I’ve seen a man flogged to death for sport. I’ve seen bodies left to rot for days in the heat of summer. And I’ve sat on that bench by the Lodge and I’ve watched every new prisoner arrive on the Master’s Side. Not one of them walked up to the wall on the first day. Not one. Most of them never go near it. So what I’m wondering . . .’ He leaned forward, his eyes fixed on mine. ‘Are you brave? Foolish? Or just curious? Because any one of those can get you killed in here . . .’
‘Here you are, gentlemen.’ The barmaid placed a large bowl of punch on the table and smiled down at me. ‘I hope it’s to your taste, sir.’
‘Well, well.’ Fleet leaned back. ‘Served by the lady of the Castle herself. What an honour.’
They exchanged a look. It was not friendly.
I introduced myself quickly, hoping she would not judge me by my company. Our hostess was not quite as young nor as beautiful as Mrs Roberts, but she was a fine-looking woman and her ribbons seemed to have come loose still further since I last checked.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.’ She had a high, girlish voice and an accent that seemed to be at war with itself: part lady, part fishwife. She poured herself a glass and looked me up and down, cheeks dimpling as she smiled. ‘Tell me, Mr Hawkins, do you like to dance?’
‘I do, madam. When the mood takes me.’
‘Well, then.’ She gazed at me wantonly over the rim of her glass. ‘You must come and find me, sir. When the mood takes you.’ She sucked a drop of punch from her bottom lip.
Fleet cleared his throat. ‘Mr Hawkins has been asking of the Common Side.’ He gestured to an empty chair. ‘Perhaps you’d like to join us? Tell us a tale of life on the other side of the wall? You must have heard a few.’ He paused, savouring the taste of the next words before he said them. ‘From your father.’
Her expression changed so fast I could scarce believe it. It was as if we were at a masquerade, and she had whipped off her mask to reveal a Medusa, cold-eyed and dangerous. Fleet – quite unruffled – flashed her a wide, triumphant grin and poured himself another glass of punch. She glared at him so hard I thought, surely he will turn to stone in front of my eyes. When he stubbornly refused to do so, she rounded on me.
‘You should choose your friends more wisely, sir,’ she hissed. Then she gathered her skirts and skipped towards the bar with a smile, the mask neatly back in its place. ‘I’ll hold you to that dance, Mr Hawkins,’ she called gaily over her shoulder, loud enough for the whole room to hear. A few of the drinkers nudged one another and laughed.
Fleet raised his glass. ‘Well. To your good health, sir. While it lasts.’
I frowned. ‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘You’ve just promised to dance with Mary Acton. The governor’s wife.’
I excused myself with a short, irritable bow. Fleet seemed unsurprised by my sudden departure, drawing the punch closer to him with the tenderness of a mother drawing her baby to her breast. I left him scribbling something in his journal with a short pencil, pipe clenched between his teeth. People shook their heads at me as I passed. I could hardly blame them.
When I reached the yard, I was relieved to find Jakes waiting for me. It was only two hours since he’d left me and yet it seemed as if a lifetime had passed. We headed back into the Lodge where he handed over the receipt for my mother’s c
ross and a small pile of silver and copper coins. They hardly covered my palm.
Jakes did his best to look encouraging. ‘There’s more than two guineas there. Enough to live on for a good while.’
‘Not on the Master’s Side it’s not,’ Cross said, emerging from his room by the gate. He must have heard the chink of the coins. His lip was swollen from where I’d hit him with the manacles. I couldn’t say I felt too bad about it.
‘What’s your cheapest room?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s down to the governor. He’ll take a week’s rent in advance from an honest debtor.’ He grinned, his eyes glittering with malice. ‘He’ll want more from you, I’d say.’
Jakes stepped closer, towering over him. ‘How much, Joseph?’ His tone was measured, but there was a hint of steel beneath.
Cross folded his arms and rocked back on his heels. ‘Two shillings and six a week. That’s if you share a bed, of course. With two or more chums.’
Two and six a week? I could get the best room in a good tavern for less. Or a brothel, come to think of it. I glanced anxiously at Jakes. ‘I have enough for that, at least.’
‘Then there’s food,’ Cross added, counting it off on his fat red fingers. ‘Bedding. Tobacco. Coffee. Coal for the grate. You’ll want someone to wash your linens. And that’s before you start on court fees. Fourpence here, threepence there; you know how lawyers are. And clerks. Then your chums will demand you pay garnish, of course. That’s another six shillings. Oh dear.’ He held up his hands. ‘I seem to have run out of fingers.’
Jakes prodded him hard in the chest. ‘It’s not Christianlike to revel in a man’s misfortune, Joseph.’
Cross snorted. ‘It’s not Christianlike to punch a man in the face, is it now, Mr Hawkins?’
I ignored him. ‘What’s this about a garnish?’
‘You have to stand your new ward mates a drink the first night,’ Jakes explained. ‘It goes to the Tap Room.’
And straight into the warden’s pocket. No wonder Mary Acton was happy to play mistress of the bar. I clinked my small handful of coins together and felt the floor shift beneath my feet. How long could I survive on so little? How long before I was thrown over the wall on to the Common Side to rot? I thought of the corpses lying out in the yard. I must stay on this side of the wall, I thought, desperately. Whatever the cost.
The Devil in the Marshalsea Page 5