“I’m not extraordinarily cruel,” Kneebone said, looking down at Jack. “But I’ve bought you body and Soul for the period of ten years. And I mean to keep you to it.”
Kneebone backed away with a Perverse and ashamed half-smile, shutting the door and locking it behind him. “Will return at dawn,” Kneebone hissed through the boards, and clunk’d down the stairs.
* * *
—
The next morning, Kneebone hurried Jack through the dining area—dim, chill, and curtained shut against the dawn—towards the Workroom, a cluttered chamber that bowed out in a bay window at the far end. Jack took in the items Kneebone had produced for sale. Dressing tables, chests, armoires, windowsills, and a bizarre quantity of little stools with cushioned tops.
“What’s this?” Jack ask’d, reaching down to poke a cushion.
“Don’t touch anything!” Kneebone shouted as Jack stumbl’d through the mess. “It’s all the property of Kneebone, and Kneebone only. Every item in this room is forbidden to you unless it’s being actively worked on.”
Kneebone sat Jack at the workbench and took a place across, their knees knocking under the table.
“I’ll teach you window-glazing, nail-casting, and the art of screwsmanship,” he announc’d. “But mostly I will teach you tuffets. Podiums for the small pet Pups of the aristocrats to perch on whilst having their portraitures painted.” He pointed at the cushioned stool Jack had pok’d. “That’s where the market is best.”
The air filled with Kneebone’s stale, arid Breath. It wasn’t rotted like so many other high-living folks’. But it was bitter, like a tree emitting old Resin from its whorled depths.
Jack reach’d for a chisel. He didn’t need demonstration. Just glancing at the tuffets he felt assured he could make something similar. ’Twasn’t difficult. Probably he’d just have to—
And then Kneebone was at his side.
With another Polhem Lock in his hand.
* * *
—
All that first day, Jack did his Thames-trick. He had no other choice against the Terror of the chain. He sent himself floating to cool Depths—morph’d his heartbeat into the thrum of deep water. He’d never had to stay under for so long—but his confinement was so relentless, Kneebone’s ownership of him so total—not just his Body, but all his Capacities, all his Potentialities, too—that going Deep was his only option.
This trick, as it turned out, was help’d immensely by working with the wood. For Jack was an ace craftsman with an uncanny understanding of the natural properties of architecture and materials. The way a sill rests inside the groove of a Wall was something magnetizing and soothing to his Attention. As was how to sculpt around a particularly recalcitrant knot in a hunk of oak. Or the cool skin of iron, or how much pressure a walnut board could take, how much torquing a birch plank would endure.
All this had Jack demonstrat’d through the constant Storm of Kneebone’s droning—a stinking stream on and on, only occasionally about how to craft wood. More largely a cascade of Tangents and opinions about the horrors of poverty—how it “breeds contagion like an overzealous sow.” It seem’d Kneebone considered himself an amateur Doctor. He bragg’d that he’d read a great number of medical textbooks. Commoners—belching “sweaty winds” and “stenchy secretions”—were, according to him, prime vectors of Disorder.
“I’ve saved you from a diseased life lived amongst the diseased,” Kneebone said, as he toss’d a moldy bun smeared with rancid butter at Jack for his morning meal when it was nigh on noon. “Saved you from that Mob”—he gestured with his head towards the window and the street beyond—“that Mob that threatens the Publick’s Health at every turn.”
* * *
—
At Nightfall, Kneebone unlocked him from the table and ushered him into the dining room. Lady Kneebone again instructed Jack to prepare and dole out the supper. It seemed the other servant had indeed expir’d.
After the pair had stuffed down their repast, Kneebone escorted him upstairs.
Bent over him. Latched his ankle to the bedpost—went to the door and stood there— Why wasn’t he leaving?
Kneebone was nailing something to the inside of the door.
“To study on.” He gestured at the tacked-up parchment when he was done. “For learning your letters.”
Kneebone read aloud, his finger tracing the words as he stood there like the pedagogical Father Jack had never had and frankly never wanted. His threadlike arms waved in the candlelight.
AN ACT FOR THE PREVENTION OF
FUGITIVE LABORERS*
A Rogue or Vagrant is defined as:
1) all Persons wandering abroad and lodging in barns, outhouses, and deserted and unoccupied buildings, or in carts or wagons, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of themselves;
2) all Common Players of Interludes, Minstrels, Jugglers; all Persons wand’ring in the Habit or Form of counterfeit Egyptians, or pretending to have skill in Physiognomy, Palmistry, or like crafty Science, or pretending to tell Fortunes, or using any subtle Craft, or unlawful Games or Plays;
3) all Persons able in Body, who run away, and leave their Wives or Children to the Parish, and not having wherewith otherwise to maintain themselves…and refuse to work for the usual and common Wages;
4) and all other idle Persons wand’ring abroad and begging shall be deemed Rogues and Vagabonds and remanded to gaol or returned to their master, with the period of service doubled.
“So you see, when you leave the house, you’ll be subject to arrest unless you’ve got a master’s note.” Kneebone worked his thin lips back and forth. Turned and clicked the door shut.*6
Jack’s breath shallow’d as he lay bound to the bed.
The one thing his mother would never have done was threaten him with Arrest; she hated the constables. He will’d himself not to think of her, not to wish himself backwards by one day. ’Twas awful there, too—’twas awful there, too. His mind gritted its teeth against thoughts too terrible to think. The miseries of his mother’s household had given way to Torments still worse.
His ribs ached from unsobbed sobs. They stung his chest like a diseased Pulse, and he fell to sleep in pain, a dog of Shame and Sorrows.*7
*1 Jack was assigned female at birth? This is a significant departure from the extant Sheppardiana. While nearly all the texts note him as “slight” or otherwise effeminate—his wiriness and compact size frequently cited as integral to his ability to escape tight spaces (e.g., the stage play Little Jack Sheppard [Yardley & Stephens, 1885], starring Nellie Farren as Jack)—this I’ve never seen.
*2 Bourgeoisie
*3 Shirt
*4 Not to get ahead of myself, but if authentic, this memoir could compete with Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite (English translation, with an introduction by Michel Foucault, 1980) for pride of place on quite a few syllabi.
For those unfamiliar with Herculine Barbin (1838–1868), let me say this. From approximately 1985 to 1995, you could not take a gay and lesbian literature, theory, anthropology or history class without being assigned this book. How many times did I feign excited queer identification with Herculine, thinking, at least (and about this I was not wrong) that it might get me laid by some of the (what were at that time called) “bicurious” members of the class. Meanwhile, I found the book repulsive and terrifying. Herculine’s desperation and isolation. The fact that time was kept by Herculine not through any objective measure—workday, seasons, school year—but rather through female encounters. When women could be held in Herculine’s line of sight; when they were inaccessible. The narrative would frequently drop off until a woman reappeared.
What happened to Herculine in these interstices? It seemed, in fact, that nothing, absolutely nothing, occurred in the abs
ence of women; that Herculine awakened from a kind of cryogenic stasis only when summoned by the scent of women, of their—
—well, you know what I mean—
—that particular draft; one to which I myself would soon awaken, and come to love beyond all measure.
Hot flint of a lightning strike, plum, basil…
Lemon, salt, tang of cider from a copper mug…
Wet forest flowers, dusted with coriander.
*5 How curious: the excision of what appears to be Jack’s given name (P——) is original to the text.
*6 Draft of the 1714 Vagrancy Act?
*7 The usage of plural “Sorrows” is unusual.
4.
Bess Khan arrived in London in December of 1713, aching of foot and sunbak’d from the weeks-long walk across the countryside.
She hadn’t been underfed on her journey—not near as starved as back Home. She knew how to tune to Shadows and skitters. Icy air puddled in clouds, ankle high, over the forest floor. Hare were easy prey—curious and frozen, their dove-gray ears poking out of the low Fog. Fish could be plucked through streamside stalking and quick knifework. She flush’d berries from knotty bushes. Nick’d crabapples from trees.
The expedition hadn’t scared her. Truth be told, she was too Sorrowful to be afraid. At least the countryside was Quiet—and she could stay clear of strangers. She relish’d the movement, the sun, even the rain for the opportunity to collect water. She didn’t fear sleeping in the grasses. She would lie quiet in the cold leaves, listening to the deer skip by in the Night, corncrakes whisking in the Wind currents overheard.
It was towns she found unnerving. Once she’d hit the banks of Black-Wall heading west—and the trees thinned near the rushing Causeway—the sound of hammers crashing on nail and axes slamming through timber had echoed through the Towns. The forest became a parade of weeping Stumps.
The land grew bereft of food. Houses peck’d the banks of the river—nearer and nearer to one another. There was nowhere to hunt, let alone forage and sleep. How did anybody survive here?
Her last leg of walking had been too long of a Day, but she’d been too frightened to rest. Had push’d on past the docks and building yards, the dwellings, churches and shops, all of it accelerating in an unceas’ng Pile towards London.
As she emerged from the relentless outskirts into the heart of the city, the true inhospitality and impossibility of London became a panic coursing through her veins. Her feet throbb’d on the cobblestones, and Bess kept her head down past constables and angry Anglos.
Her father had traveled the opposite route so many years before. Had his Heart fluttered fast in his chest? Had the Anglos glared at him as they did her?
When a street sweeper smiled shyly, halting his broom to let her pass, she gather’d her will to ask where to find Refuge.
“All exiles flock to the Anabaptist Meeting House in Drury Lane,” he said softly. “The Anabaptists provide shelter to any soul capable of work.”
* * *
—
It was Evening when she arrived.
The bricks of the Meeting House were a dull gingerbread brown. The building was fronted by a lawn—a Murdered forest in miniature: each grass-blade truncated, lopped off, silenced.
At the far end of the lawn, the main doors soared. Bess lost her nerve. Who will be inside—and what if they don’t welcome exiles? What if the street-sweeper was in jest?
Determining to tiptoe in some back entry without raising an alarm, she wove between the trees at the rear of the building. The walls of the Meeting House were pocked with small glass portals in a bloody tint. Bess stood on her toes, face to glass. She could not see inside.
She duck’d down into the brush that spread along the sides of the building. The shrubbery was a thick mesh of berry-spangled butcher’s-broom. It settled as she moved through. A tangle of roots shivered out of the flat gray shale surrounding the foundation of the building, and she tripped in a glut of waxy ferns, stumbling hard into a small wooden door fronted with tarnished steel braces.
The doors gave way—discharging Bess into the low-ceilinged basement chamber of the chapel—then shut hard behind her. The room, alas, was full of congregants, many of whom looked well off, swathed in sumptuous cloaks and emitting that particular dusty effluvia of fine velvet. A sermon was being preach’d. Heads shuffled. Bess shrank into herself, trying for inconspicuousness, nearly turning to leave—but scrambling out now would appear odd and raise suspicion. Besides, her feet Ached badly.
A seat was free towards the back—where the folk appear’d more common. She strove to settle with as little fuss as possible—amidst a nest of whispers from the front of the room. She drew her bones inwards, her hands on her lap. The pews breath’d their humid bark break, hard underneath her.
The pastor, tall and thin with a frizz that reached upwards towards God, stood at the pulpit. His eyes glowed and his narrow chest swelled as he spoke. His voice gonged out of him as he pontificated on Corruption.
“Individualists,” he inton’d, as the wind picked up outside and the doors sucked out slightly. A commotion of bird Wings lathered the air, ascending from the brush. “London is a place of individualists. No longer busy with simple folk—sheep milling, beer being quaffed, folks picking herbs for sustenance. All gone. Now, a Body be gaoled for perambulating the town without occupation, folks afraid to walk the streets in fear of being arrested for Idleness, and even the open Sewers and the trash piles prohibited—property of the newly formed Nightsoil Concerns, authorized by the Lord Mayor himself.
“Oh, it’s a Devilish place!” The pastor’s voice rose higher as he preached on, detailing the hazards of City life. Striking a workmanlike pose, he crouched down at the level of the congregation, putting his elbows on his knees in a theatrical performance of Ordinariness.
“And yet they say that ev’ry corner holds a new Opportunity,” he moan’d. “Dry’d gooseberries for sale from the South Pacific carry’d on Dutch boats and transit’d through innumerable hands. Ornaments and pet pups from the East. Coffee and Sugar from the West. And you might say, Well isn’t this a beneficial thing? An expansion of our Opportunities and our Pleasures? And the only thing I can say about this, is: No. It is not a good thing— It is a very dangerous thing that holds unknown tribulations. These are terrible times—times in which we see our Enemy for what he truly is, when he reveals his full, horrifying visage.”
Bess did not know what “gooseberries” were. But she understood avarice and she could plainly see what the pastor was driving at: London was a place of shopping and Hollowness. It was worse than Bess had imagined. First the murdered forests, the dwindling wildlife and the glaring strangers. And now this entirely new category of bizarre dangers to do with Fruit. She trembled when he blared out, “Truly, Brothers and Sisters, these are times when we encounter, without artifice, the merchanting of our very souls.”
And the Merchants at the front of the room lapped this up, humming approvingly and nodding to themselves. Bess saw quickly that what defined this class, above all else, was their ability to recognize the evils of the World and count themselves above it. Their capacity to lie and self-flatter. Merchants, after all, love nothing so much as believing that they alone among their class are in possession of Ethics and Virtue.
And the pastor’s advice? Love and peacefulness.
Well, now—this was a problem.
Bess could have overlook’d his popularity with the finer sort. Perhaps he felt he could convert them to his cause. But his belief in peacefulness was unforgivable. Peacefulness would never vanquish unstoppable cruelty.
An image from her past flashed up that Bess did not mean to summon.
* * *
—
After several weeks of love and peacefulness—and several weeks, too, of being task’d mercilessly with scrubbing the sanctuary, preparin
g the Meals, and cleaning the Plates of the well-off congregants—Bess was fatigued in a particular way she’d never before felt: fatigue mix’d with boredom. It was a miserable combination. She had resort’d to napping during the sermons.
On this particular day, Bess could feel sleep zooming up from some warm, far-off Place within her as the pastor roared his usual pap from the pulpit. “All lambs of God must join together in peacefulness, holiness, and love!”
—“Peacefulness!” someone harrumph’d nearby.
Bess peek’d an eye open.
A cloud of Vestments inched its way down the pew towards her. A young being swathed in older-woman clothes. A brocaded silk gown and a prinked-up hat. Boots laced high.
“You don’t believe in ’t?” Bess ask’d.
The cloud shook its head. “Peace ’s useless here.” She half-smiled behind her veil.
Finally, a non-hypocritical congregant. Bess caught a whiff of the girl. Gardenia—opulence—the spice of struck matches. A decadent perfume, and yet there was something reassuringly off-kilter about her. She could see, in this young woman, a once coltish girl with an almost-dissolved remnant of awkwardness. Back when other girls were cute sprites, this girl must have been a rangy, nearly ugly thing. But her young adulthood was descending upon her unstoppably, complete with a tangle of chestnut hair, and a beautiful, righteous anger.
“Bene-darkmans,” the girl whisper’d.
“Bene-wha?” Bess return’d. Bess knew Latin. That was not what the London cleave was speaking.
The girl cocked her head.
“You don’t know London cant*1?”
Bess ignor’d the pretend-question. She had heard enough of London to guess that this girl was likely an Abbess*2—frequenters of revival-houses and meeting halls, scouting for lost young Souls, orphan girls without means.
Confessions of the Fox Page 3