The Devil in the Marshalsea

by Antonia Hodgson

  I unwrapped the cloth to find a short dagger, plain but well-made. I slipped it beneath my waistcoat. ‘It’s good of you to help me, Mr Jakes. I hope Charles is paying you for your time.’

  ‘Glad to help, sir. Captain Roberts was a loyal friend. I owe him my life.’ He looked down at the ground. Then he looked up and smiled again, eyes twinkling. ‘And yes, Mr Buckley is paying me for my time.’

  ‘From what I hear of Captain Roberts, he would approve of you making a profit.’

  Jakes laughed. ‘Aye, true enough.’

  ‘So,’ I said, clapping my hands together. ‘Where shall we begin our enquiries? Is the Tap Room open?’

  ‘You won’t find answers there. I have a better idea.’ He glanced over his shoulder, a soldier’s instinct. ‘You had breakfast?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He fixed me with a sombre look. ‘Good.’

  Jakes was adamant. If we wanted to learn anything about Roberts’ death, we must visit the Common Side. ‘That’s where he was found. That’s where the secrets are kept. If someone knows something, we’ll find him over the wall.’ He gripped his club. ‘You’ll be safe with me, sir.’

  I frowned. ‘Acton’s not a fool. If he hears I’ve been asking questions over there he’ll suspect something.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jakes jerked his chin towards the Lodge gate. ‘I’ve thought of that.’

  To my dismay Woodburn bumbled into view, hand clamped to his hat against the blustering wind.

  Jakes took one look at my expression and burst out laughing. ‘His heart’s in the right place, sir. And he can help us without knowing it.’ Woodburn, it transpired, visited the Common Side regularly to comfort the sick, lead the prisoners in prayer and hand out food bought with donations from the parish. ‘But keep that to yourself,’ Jakes muttered. ‘Or Acton will take it in a flash.’

  ‘Mr Hawkins!’ Woodburn limped over, breathless and gouty. ‘My dear fellow. Jakes tells me you wish to help me in God’s work this morning?’

  I glanced at Jakes. He widened his eyes and nodded slowly. ‘Ah . . . yes. Indeed.’

  ‘Mr Hawkins was too shy to write to you in person,’ Jakes explained. ‘But he’s most eager to join you on your visit.’ He turned to me, face perfectly composed. ‘You were inspired by the good reverend’s example, isn’t that right, sir?’

  ‘Inspired, yes . . .’ I echoed, as Woodburn’s face puffed out with pride. ‘I thought I might ease their suffering in some small way . . .’

  ‘Through prayer,’ Jakes added.

  ‘Through prayer,’ I agreed, miserably.

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ Woodburn beamed.

  Joseph Cross sauntered over, twirling his ring of keys. ‘So, Hawkins, I hear the governor had sport with you last night.’ He sniggered. ‘Says you almost shat yourself.’

  Jakes crunched one heavy step towards him. ‘You’ll get your neck wrung for good one of these days, Joseph.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen . . .’ Woodburn cautioned.

  Cross made a show of looking about him. ‘Won’t find any of those around here.’

  Cross gathered together a half dozen of Acton’s trusties, including Jenings the nightwatch and Chapman from the Tap Room, who was laden down with several bottles of liquor. When we reached the small wooden door fixed into the Common wall Cross turned and addressed the men. ‘You know the rules, boys. Hands on your clubs. Don’t take any damned nonsense from those sons of whores.’ He slotted the key in the lock. ‘And breathe through your mouth.’

  I let the trusties go through first, then Woodburn. Jakes steeled himself, then squeezed through the door. I hesitated for a moment – every nerve screaming at me to turn back.

  ‘Hawkins,’ Jakes called, softly.

  I took a deep, steadying breath and stepped over to the Common Side.

  . . . And was it so very different, truly? I gazed about me, heart pounding. The sky – low, grey, heavy – looked just the same on this side of the wall. The worn and broken cobbles felt the same beneath my feet. But the air . . . the air felt different. Thick and cloying. Poisoned. I glanced at the other men and knew they all felt it – even Cross.

  ‘God, I hate this place,’ he muttered.

  We walked towards the crumbling prison quarters – a raggle-taggle of ancient timber houses slumped, exhausted, against the far south wall. The Master’s Side had been unlocked for more than an hour but here on the Common Side the prisoners were still trapped in their wards. Three hundred souls crammed thirty, forty, fifty to a cell all night, stifled and starving, forced to breathe in each other’s filth. As we drew closer we could hear them banging on the doors, begging in broken voices to be let out, for pity’s sake.

  ‘Be quiet, you dogs,’ Cross snarled as he passed, slamming his club hard against the doors. ‘Or we’ll leave you locked up in there all day.’

  The cries turned to whimpers, then silence. Cross gestured to Chapman, who began pouring the liquor he’d brought with him into wooden cups. Jakes grabbed one and passed it over. ‘Not yet,’ he said, stopping me as I brought it to my lips. He passed me a neckerchief. ‘Cover your nose and mouth.’

  The other men were all doing the same, rinsing the cloth in the liquor before tying it tight.

  Cross stomped to the building at the far southeast corner, battling hard against the bitter wind. ‘Sick wards first today,’ he called over his shoulder. He pulled a face beneath his neckerchief. ‘Get the worst of it over.’

  Behind me, Woodburn began to pray softly to himself behind his handkerchief.

  The trusties positioned themselves by the door. Cross chose a key from the ring and slotted it into the lock. ‘Stand back,’ he shouted to the prisoners inside. Chapman and the others knocked back their liquor in one quick gulp.

  The door swung free.

  A foul, putrid stench poured into the yard – so thick and strong we all cried out as one, turning our faces away. It was the festering, heavy stink of disease, of rotting, infected bodies, of men forced to piss and shit and sweat together in an airless cell. There was no escape from it, it clung to my nostrils no matter how hard I pressed the cloth to my face. I began to heave uncontrollably, again and again. I stumbled away, collapsing helplessly to my hands and knees and vomiting across the cobbles until there was nothing left but a thin stream of acid bile.

  I stood up at last, half-faint, eyes watering, stomach aching from being turned inside out. By now they had opened up both the men’s and women’s sick wards and were dragging the night’s dead out into the yard, heels scraping the dirt. I clapped my hand across my mouth and looked away, but I could still see the grey, lifeless bodies lined up in a row, even when I closed my eyes. My stomach heaved again.

  Cross walked over – to mock me, I thought, but he just picked up my cup and filled it to the brim with liquor.

  ‘Drink,’ he ordered, thrusting it at me.

  I did as I was told, hands shaking, coughing as it scorched a path down my throat. But it was sharp and clean – a welcome relief from the terrible stink of the sick rooms.

  Cross swigged from the bottle, swilling it round his mouth before swallowing. ‘Better?’

  I nodded weakly.

  He studied me with bloodshot eyes, half-curious, half-suspicious. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Hawkins?’

  I took another drink. ‘God’s work.’

  Cross sputtered his drink on to the cobbles. ‘Well, then,’ he said, when he’d recovered. ‘He must fucking hate you, mustn’t He, sir? Any more meat, Mr Jenings?’

  The nightwatchman was carrying a body wrapped in stinking rags out of the women’s ward. It seemed too thin, too light to be human. He laid the bundle gently on the ground next to the others. ‘Just these seven, Joseph.’

  Just these seven. My God. No wonder the man was afraid of ghosts.

  There was a roll of thunder. The men looked up at the sky as Cross walked slowly from corpse to corpse, eyes narrowed. ‘Five men, two women.’ He nudged the nearest one with his boot.
‘Gaol fever by the looks of it.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Jakes muttered in my ear. ‘Starved to death, most of them.’

  It started to rain.

  Chapman brought a prisoner out from the sick ward, a shaking, sweating skeleton of a man and only a day or two from death himself. Chapman was careful not to touch him – just prodded him forward with his club. The man stared at the row of bodies, no doubt seeing his own future laid out in the dirt before him.

  ‘Any of these have family?’ Cross asked.

  The prisoner nodded. He was shivering hard – feverish.

  ‘Show me.’

  He pointed a grimy finger. Four of them.

  ‘Right,’ Cross frowned and gestured to a small hut set close to the Common wall. ‘Sling them in the Strong Room with the others.’

  I flinched. ‘Others? There are others?’

  ‘Can’t release the bodies until the family pays the fee. Governor’s rules.’ Cross took another long swig from his bottle and added, idly, ‘Jack Carter’s still in there.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Woodburn cried, startled. He had been quiet all this time but now he seized Cross’ arm. ‘There must be some mistake. I gave Benjamin the money to release him.’

  The trusties opened up the rest of the wards while Woodburn and Cross argued loudly over Jack’s corpse and whether or not it was paid for. It was raining hard now, and lightning flickered in the east over Bermondsey, but the prisoners still streamed out into the open air, desperate to escape their cells at last. The yard was soon crowded with thin, dazed figures. Some were in a better state than others – the porters and servants who had secured jobs on the Master’s Side and could afford to sleep in one of the better wards. Others looked like walking versions of the corpses laid out on the cobbles.

  As I looked about me, stunned with the horror of it all, a young woman stumbled past, tears streaming silently down her face. She would have been pretty once but now her skin was covered in weeping sores, as if a hundred hungry mouths had burst out of her flesh. There were a few children running out into the yard now too, half-naked, scalps red and bloody from scratching at the lice crawling in their filthy, matted hair. The youngest, a boy no older than Acton’s son, tottered over to me, holding a tiny scrap of pink silk. He waved it at me shyly.

  I turned to Jakes, a hard lump in my throat. We stared at each other for a long moment, the rain soaking us both to the bone.

  ‘Have another drink,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll get started.’

  He strode off through the crowds and into one of the wards. The trusties had finished moving the fresh corpses into the Strong Room. They covered the three without family in old, stained sheets and left them out by the wall. Then they scrambled back to the Master’s Side as fast as they could.

  Woodburn hurried over. ‘Mr Hawkins, can you start the rounds without me? I must go with Cross and sort out this business with Jack’s body – it really should have been taken away yesterday.’ He leaned closer. ‘Tell Captain Anderson we’ll bring the food round to the begging grates at six o’clock tonight. Acton will be too busy collecting rent to notice.’ He paused and looked deep into my face, eyes filled with concern. ‘You’ve had a shock. One forgets.’ He patted my arm. ‘You’ve held up well, sir. I fainted the first time.’

  ‘But you came back.’

  Woodburn sighed. ‘This is my flock. How can I abandon them?’ He bowed and hurried away.

  I felt a tug on my jacket. The little boy with the scrap of silk had edged close enough to reach me. ‘Bread,’ he pleaded, thrusting the cloth towards me as if it were money.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t speak.

  He began to sob, held the scrap higher in his tiny fist. ‘Hungry . . .’

  An elderly woman limped over and smacked the boy hard across the head. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said, dragging him away, blackened nails digging into his arm. ‘You won’t tell the governor, will you?’

  ‘They’re only allowed to beg at the grates,’ Jakes said, making me jump. I hadn’t heard him approach. ‘Come on. I’ve found someone who’ll talk.’

  Captain Ralph Anderson was prowling the ward like a wild animal. Even Jakes looked wary of him. A wide, badly healed scar cut down his left cheek into his lip – an old wound won in a battle or a brawl (either way I wasn’t about to ask). It would have disfigured a better-looking man but it suited Anderson’s wild, craggy face. There was a look in his eye I’d seen in old fighting bears as they were led out into the ring. Oh, this again. Very well.

  Anderson was constable of his ward – the leader of a group of thirty men who shared a room not much bigger than Belle Isle. As we entered the cell two men staggered past with a large, sloshing barrel reeking of piss.

  ‘Once you’ve tipped that out tell Harry Mitchell I want him,’ Anderson bellowed after them.

  This was the best ward on the Common Side, with six beds and a few hammocks slung from the wall. The room was empty now, and the scent of a thin beef stew bubbling in the hearth covered the worst of the Common Side stench. It was clean too – Anderson again, I thought, running the place like a barracks. He still wore his old blue coat from his days in the army, 3rd Dragoons, Jakes said. He’d fought at Ramillies twenty years back. The coat would have paid for a few decent meals but he’d kept it all this time.

  He gestured for us to sit with him by the fire. Jakes chose to stand by the window instead – mainly, I think, because the chair he’d been offered was so ancient and worm-eaten it would have collapsed beneath him.

  ‘So you’re looking for Roberts’ killer,’ Anderson said, frowning at me as I perched cautiously on my own creaking chair. ‘What’s in it for my ward?’

  A trade for information? Fair enough. ‘I’m a friend of Charles Buckley, Sir Philip’s chaplain. I’ll make sure Sir Philip hears of any . . . complaints,’ I ended, feebly.

  Anderson shot me a withering look.

  ‘You said you knew something?’ Jakes called impatiently from the window.

  Anderson leaned back in his chair. ‘Nothing’s free in this world, Jakes. You know that. Try again, Mr Hawkins.’

  ‘I can put your case to Mr Gilbourne,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘He’s a decent man, he’ll want to help. And he already knows of my investigation.’ I stopped. Anderson was staring at me, open-mouthed with horror.

  ‘Gilbourne knows?’ He smacked his hand to his forehead. ‘Perfect.’

  I frowned, puzzled. ‘Is he not to be trusted? He seems an honourable gentleman.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I’m sure that’s how he seems . . .’ Jakes snorted. ‘Gilbourne can seem whatever he likes, cunning bastard. The man’s a snake.’

  ‘It’s worse than that,’ Anderson groaned. ‘It was Gilbourne killed Roberts.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The rain had turned to hail, clattering against the roof as if a thousand dice were being hurled down from heaven. Men from the ward hurried inside looking for shelter only to be ordered back out into the storm again. ‘Private meeting,’ Anderson growled as they retreated hurriedly from his ill-temper. ‘And where the devil is Mitchell?’

  ‘On his way. Working . . . other side,’ one of the men wheezed, then bent double in a coughing fit, disease rattling in his lungs.

  I’d asked Anderson questions, of course. How do you know Gilbourne killed Roberts? Why did he do it? How did he do it? Why did you say nothing about it? He ignored me. Jakes looked furious. I could see him weighing up his chances if it came to beating the story out of the old soldier. I wondered if it were possible to keep my dignity while hiding under the bed.

  After a long, tense wait Harry Mitchell appeared, sluicing the rain from his tattered clothes. He was a stocky man of about forty, with a dark complexion – Cornish, I thought, or Welsh. He looked fit enough for the Common Side, but tired from overwork. I thought he looked familiar, and then I realised he was a porter on the Master’s Side. He’d brought Trim his supper on my first night.

  ‘You asked to see me, sir?’ Corn
ish. Standing to attention as if Anderson really were his commanding officer.

  Anderson gazed at him levelly and said one word. ‘Gilbourne.’

  Mitchell flinched. His eyes darted to Jakes, and then to me. ‘Trustworthy, are they?’

  Jakes put a wide, scarred hand to his heart. ‘Upon my soul.’

  ‘And mine,’ I added hurriedly, touching my mother’s cross.

  Mitchell breathed heavily through his nose, and said nothing.

  ‘Oh, for Gawd’s sake,’ Jakes muttered, and threw him a tuppenny piece.

  Mitchell snatched it from the air and smiled at me, suddenly convinced. A miracle. He sat down on the bed nearest the fire, resting his hands upon his knees. ‘Well, then. Edward Gilbourne.’ Mr Mitchell had an unexpected flair for the dramatic. ‘He killed the captain, didn’t he?’

  ‘Harry was Roberts’ servant,’ Anderson explained.

  ‘Cooked his meals,’ Mitchell nodded. ‘Cleaned his clothes, his sheets. Errands and messages. Fourpence a week. First week, he apologises. Says he’s not good for it. I says, “Don’t you worry, Captain, I know you’re an honourable gentleman, you’ll pay me when you have it. Now how about some of this mutton broth?” Once he’d finished it right to the bottom of the bowl, I says to him, “Oh, and by the way, Captain. Forgot to mention. I pissed in that. And so will any servant you fancy hiring from the Common Side from now on. Unless you have that fourpence by any chance.” He took it in good part, rest his soul. And he never played me after that. He was a rogue, but—’

  ‘Harry . . .’ Anderson prompted, exasperated. ‘Gilbourne . . . ?’

  ‘A week before he was murdered,’ Mitchell continued, unruffled, ‘the captain grabs a hold of me and says, “Harry, here’s a tale for you. I’ll be leaving the Marshalsea in a few days. So you must find yourself a new position.” I just laughed – he was always talking nonsense.’