Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  Mrs. Cleggat looked at her sharply. "You'd better give me whatever else you've got right now. If you don't I promise you it'll be stolen before you've been here two hours."

  Amber hesitated a moment longer and then, with a heavy sigh, she unfastened the clasp and drew the strand out of her cloak. Mrs. Cleggat gave her six pounds for them and promptly turned her attention to the other women. The Quakeress stood up and faced her squarely, but as she spoke her voice was soft and meek.

  "I have no money, friend. Do with me as thou wilt."

  "You'd better send out for some, Mrs. Or you go into the Common side which, though I say it myself, isn't fit for a baboon."

  "No matter. I can get used to it."

  Mrs. Cleggat shrugged and her voice was contemptuously indifferent. "You fanatics." (A fanatic, in the common understanding, was anyone who belonged to neither the Catholic nor the Anglican Church.) "Well enough then, Mrs. Give me your cloak for the entrance fee and your shoes for easement."

  Out of doors it was almost warm for the winter had been a strange one, but in there it was chill and damp. Nevertheless the girl untied her cloak and took it off. Amber, looking from her to Mrs. Cleggat with growing indignation, now suddenly made up her mind.

  "Here! Keep it on! I'll pay for you! You'll fall sick without it!"

  Moll glanced at her scornfully. "Don't be a fool! You've little enough for yourself!"

  But the Quakeress gave her a gentle smile. "Thank thee, friend. Thou art kind—but I want nothing. If I fall sick, it is the will of God."

  Amber regarded her dubiously, then extended the coins toward Mrs. Cleggat. "Take it for her anyway."

  "The girl will be a damned nuisance to me if she's made comfortable. Keep the money for yourself. It'll go quick enough." She turned to the housewife, who admitted that she had not so much as a farthing. Amber looked at Moll to see if she would not offer to share the woman's expenses with her, but Moll was glancing idly about the room and whistling beneath her breath. "Well, then—I'll pay for her."

  This time the offer was accepted and the woman thanked her profusely, promising to repay her as soon as she was able— which would apparently be never if she was to be kept in prison until her debt was cleared. And then a man came in to put on the lighter shackles. They consisted of braceletes which fitted loosely about the wrists and ankles with long chains stretching between, and though they were awkward and clanked dismally they did not seem to be otherwise uncomfortable.

  "Take the fanatic to the Common Felon's side," said Mrs. Cleggat to the man when he had done. "Come with me, ladies." They trooped out of the room after her, first Moll, then Amber holding the bird-cage on her shoulder, and then the housewife.

  Mounting a dark narrow stairway they reached a big room where the door stood open; above it was nailed a skull-and-crossbones. Mrs. Cleggat went in first with her candle and as they followed they could see two large flat beds, covered with flock mattresses and some grey rumpled bedding, a table, scarred stools and chairs, and a cold fireplace above and beside which hung some blackened kettles and pans and a few pewter mugs and dishes. Certainly there was nothing in this barren dirty room to suggest the luxurious quarters Mrs. Cleggat had painted.

  "This," she said, "is the Lady Debtors' Ward."

  Amber looked at her in angry astonishment, while Moll smiled. "This!" she cried, forgetting her manacles and giving a sweep of one arm. "But you told us—"

  "Never mind what I told you. If you don't like it I can take you to the Common Side."

  Amber turned away, disgusted, and Mrs. Cleggat prepared to leave with Moll, who would go to the Lady Felon's Quarters. Oh, she thought furiously. This nasty place! I won't stay here a day! Then she swung around.

  "I want to send a letter!"

  "That'll cost you three shillings."

  Amber paid it. "Are we the only prisoners?" She could still hear the voices, the incessant sounds that seemed to come from the very walls, but they had seen no one else.

  "Most of the others are down in the Tap-Room. It's Christmas Eve,"

  The letter, written by an amanuensis, was sent to Almsbury, and she was very confident that he would have her out of there within twenty-four hours. When she got no immediate reply she told herself that since it was Christmas Day he had very likely been away from his lodgings. Tomorrow, she promised herself, he'll come. But he did not, and the days passed and at last she was forced to realize that either he had not received the letter or was no longer interested in her.

  The Lady Debtors' Ward was the least crowded one in Newgate, but even so she and the housewife, Mrs. Buxted, had to share those scant accommodations with a dozen other women. In many wards, however, thirty or forty were crowded into the same space and there were more than three hundred prisoners in a building intended for half that number. It was impossible for everyone to lie on the beds at once and they had to use cooking utensils and dishes in turn. Usually these were merely scraped off between meals, for water cost money and was always stale and stinking and afloat with vegetation and specks of sewage. This encouraged them to spend what they could on ale or wine.

  The entire prison lay in an eternal half-gloom, for the windows, deep-set and narrow, opened only upon dark passages. Links and tallow-candles were bought by the prisoners and they burnt all day long. Large ugly cats and numerous dogs, half-naked with mange, roamed the hallways and contested with the rats for every shred of refuse; Amber had to keep a constant eye on her parakeet. The smells were thick and almost palpable, product of the accumulated rot of centuries, and sometimes there was another strange and sickening odour which she learned came from the heads being boiled by the hangman in his kitchen below their ward. She had not been there an hour when she started scratching furiously. She caught the plump lice between her fingers, squashing them like boiled peas.

  Newcomers were automatically assigned the duties of chamber-maid. The first morning Amber and Mrs. Buxted carried the slop-jars down the hall and emptied them into the cesspool below. The stench of the heavy fumes made Amber almost faint. After that she paid another woman two pence a week to do the job for her.

  The prison was considered to be a place of detention, not of correction, and from eight o'clock in the morning until nine at night all inside doors were opened and each was free to follow his inclination.

  Those who had been arrested because of their religious beliefs were now permitted to hold services, make what converts they could, or preach sedition. Whoever had money usually spent it in the Tap-Room, drinking and gambling. Well-to-do inmates sometimes gave large entertainments attended by people of the first quality, for some criminals enjoyed considerable popularity. Visitors were admitted to the Hall and swarmed there by the hundreds. A man might have his wife and children to keep him company—sometimes for years—or if he preferred and had the price, he could take his choice of the prostitutes who daily came from outside.

  Thievery was common and fights went on continually, for discipline was maintained by the prisoners themselves. Some went mad and were heavily chained, but usually not segregated. Babies were born but seldom lived long, and the death-rate among all prisoners was high.

  Amber remained as aloof from the life of the jail as she could; this was one place where she desired no popularity. She did not go to the Tap-Room and of course she had no visitors, so that the only time she left her own ward was on Sunday when everyone was herded up to the third-floor Chapel.

  Most of the women in the Lady Debtors' Ward were the victims of misfortune and all of them expected soon to be released. They sat by the hour talking of the day when their debt would be paid—by a father or brother or friend—and they would go free. Amber listened to them, wistfully, for she had no one to pay her debt and no reason to hope for freedom, though she continued stubbornly to do so.

  With aching homesickness her memories went back to the Goodegroome cottage. She took pleasure in remembering many things she had not known she cared for. She remembered how the dormer windows o
f her bedroom were wreathed in roses, and the delicious summer scent they had had. She remembered how the overhanging eaves were full of sparrows so that every morning she woke to the sound of their twirring and twittering. She remembered Sarah's wonderful rich food, the clean-scrubbed flagstones of the kitchen floor and the rows of glossy pewter lining the shelves. She longed passionately for a sight of the sky, a breath of fresh air, the smell of flowers and hay new-mown, the sound of a bird's song.

  The holidays were dreary as she had never known they could be.

  She remembered what Christmas had been the year before when she had helped Sarah to make mince-pies and plum-pottages; she and all her cousins had dressed up to go mumming; and everyone on the farm had toasted the fruit trees in apple-cider, according to the old old custom. On New Year's Eve she spent several shillings of her fast-dwindling supply for Rhenish wine and the Lady Debtors drank it, proposing a toast to the new year. Just before midnight the bells began to ring from every steeple in London and Amber burst into lonely frightened tears, for she was sure that she would never live to hear them ring in another year.

  A week later Newgate was swept with frenzied excitement A rebellion had broken out in the city, led by a band of religious zealots, and for three days and nights they ran riot through the streets. Bellowing for King Jesus, they shot down whoever opposed them. Inside the prison they heard the bells banging out an ominous warning, confused shouts and cries and the sound of flying hoofs. The prisoners gathered anxiously in groups, talking of massacre and fire, discussing means of escape; the women became hysterical, screamed at the gates and begged to be set free.

  But the Fifth Monarchists were hunted out, killed or captured, and within a few days twenty of them had been hanged, drawn and quartered. Their remains were brought to Newgate. and dismembered legs and arms and torsos lay in the courtyard while Esquire Dun was at work in his kitchen pickling the heads in bay-salt and cumin seed. Prison life settled back into the normal rut of drunkenness and gambling, quarrels and venery and theft,

  When the quarter-sessions were held Amber was brought to trial along with Mrs. Buxted and Moll Turner and a great many others and—like most of them—found guilty. She was sentenced to remain in Newgate until her debt had been paid in full. She had been so hopeful she would be released after the trial that it was a severe shock and for several days she was sunk in despondency; she would have been almost glad to die. But gradually she began trying to persuade herself that her position was not so desperate as it seemed. Why—any day Almsbury might arrive and rescue her. It always happens, she assured herself, when you least expect it; and she tried very hard to stop expecting Almsbury.

  She often saw Moll Turner, who wandered in to talk to her and to urge her to come out and mingle with the others. "Christ, sweetheart, what can you lose? D'ye want to rot in here?"

  "Of course not!" said Amber crossly. "I want to get out of this damned place!"

  Moll laughed and went to the fireplace to light a pipeful of tobacco. Many of the prisoners, both men and women, smoked incessantly for the tobacco was supposed to protect them against disease. She came back puffing and sat down opposite Amber, ostentatiously drumming one hand on the table-top.

  "See that?" On her middle finger she wore a large diamond. "Got that off a lady was here visitin' day before yesterday. We gave her the budge, and when she caught her balance I had the fambles cheat and somebody else had the scout." Moll often talked in an underworld cant, of which Amber had begun to pick up a few words. A "fambles cheat" was a ring and a "scout" was a watch. "Oh, I tell you, my dear, the Hall's a mighty profitable place. At this rate I can buy my way out of here in another month. "Well—" She heaved herself up. "Stay in here if you like—"

  Amber, half-convinced by Moll's tales of facile theft, ventured out into the hallway a time or two, but she was always accosted so swiftly and roughly that she would pick up her skirts and run as hard as she could go for the comparative privacy of the Lady Debtors' Ward. Moll laughed at this too and told her that she was a fool not to take advantage of what she could get.

  "Some of those gentlemen are mighty rich. In time I don't doubt you could earn your way out. Of course," she would admit, with her lop-sided smile, "four hundred pound ain't come by very quick, and there's a dozen half-crown sluts they have the pick of any day in the week."

  Several times she brought Amber offers of specific sums from one or another of the men, but it was never enough that Amber cared to make the venture. Moll's condition was sufficient warning and she was in mortal fear of being peppered herself. Nevertheless she would have done anything to get out of Newgate—taken any wild chance that might keep her baby from being born there.

  By the end of a month her money had dwindled to less than two pounds, for everything had a price and it was invariably a high one. She had been paying to have her food sent in—the alternative was to eat the prison-fare, mouldy bread and stale water, with charity-meat once a week—and she had also paid for Mrs. Buxted's meals because otherwise the woman would have had none. When a midwife who shared the ward told her that she was too thin for a pregnant woman and that the baby was getting all she ate, she decided that she must sell the gold ear-rings.

  Mrs. Cleggat gave them one scornful glance. "Those things? Brass and Bristol-stone! They're not worth three farthings! Where'd ye get 'em—St. Martin's?" A great deal of cheap imitation jewellery was sold in the parish of St. Martin-le-Grand.

  Hurt, Amber did not answer her. But she had begun to notice herself that the thin gilt was wearing and showed a grey metal beneath. She was almost glad that they were too worthless to sell.

  At the end of her fifth week in Newgate Amber sat in one of the boxes of the chapel, stared at her dirty fingernails, and worried about how she would eat a month from then. For days she had been trying to find courage to tell Mrs. Buxted that she could not feed her any longer. But she had not been able to do it, for every day Mrs. Buxted's daughter came and brought her the youngest child to nurse. As usual, Amber had not heard a word of the sermon, though it had been going on for a long while.

  Now Moll Turner gave her a sharp nudge. "There's Black Jack Mallard!" she whispered. "And he's got his eye on you!"

  Amber glanced sulkily across the room where she saw a gigantic black-haired man sitting staring at her, and as she did so he smiled. Cross at being interrupted in her worries, she scowled at him and looked away. Moll, thoroughly disgusted, nudged her several times but Amber refused to pay her any attention.

  "Oh, you and your hogan-mogan airs!" muttered Moll as they left the chapel. "Who d'ye expect to find here in Newgate, pray? His Majesty?"

  "What's so fine about him, I'd like to know?" She had thought him too dark and ugly.

  "Well, Mrs., whatever you may think, Black Jack Mallard is somebody! He's a rum-pad, let me tell you."

  "A highwayman?"

  Highwaymen, she had discovered, were the elite of the criminal world, though this man was the first she had seen. She did remember, though, one of that brotherhood who had hung, a mere clean-picked skeleton, in a set of gibbet-irons at the Marygreen crossroads, mute warning to others of his kind. And in a slight breeze the bones and irons had had an eerie clank that sent the villagers home before sundown to avoid him in the dark.

  "A highwayman. And one of the best, too. He's already broke out of here three times."

  Amber's eyes opened with a snap. "Broke out of here! How!"

  "Ask 'im yourself," said Moll, and went off, leaving Amber at the door of her own ward.

  Staring dazedly, Amber walked inside. Here was the chance she had been waiting for! If he'd got out before, he'd get out again—perhaps soon. And when he did— She was suddenly excited and full of optimism— But all at once her hopes collapsed.

  Look at me! I'm fat as a barn-yard fowl and stinking dirty. The Devil himself wouldn't have a use for me now.

  There was no doubt her appearance had suffered sad changes during the past five weeks. Now, at the end of her s
eventh month of pregnancy, she could no longer button her bodice, the once pert frills had wilted, and her smock was a dirty grey. Her gown was stained in the armpits, spotted with food, and her skirt hung inches shorter in front. She had long ago thrown away her silk stockings, for they had been streaked with runs, and her shoes were scuffed out at the toes. She had not seen a mirror since she had been there, nor taken off her clothes, and though she had scrubbed her teeth on her smock she could feel a slick film as she ran her tongue over them. Her face was grimy and her hair, which she had to comb with her long finger-nails, snarled and greasy.

  Despair on her face, Amber's hands ran down over her body. But she was sharply aware that this might be her one chance, and that made her determination begin to rise. It's dark in here, she told herself. He can't see me very well—and maybe I can do something, maybe I can make myself look a little better someway. She decided that she would do what she could to improve her appearance and then go down to the Tap-Room, on the chance of seeing him, though admission there would cost her a precious shilling and a half.

  She was scrubbing her teeth with some salt and a piece torn off her smock—rinsing her mouth out with ale and spitting into the fireplace—when a man appeared at the door, and told her that Black Jack wanted to see her in the Tap-Room. She gave a start and turned quickly.

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you."

  "Oh, Lord! And I'm all unready! Wait a moment!"

  Not knowing what to do, she began smoothing her dress and rubbing her hands over her face in the hope of taking off some of the dirt.

  "I'm paid to light you down, Mrs., but not to wait here. Come along." He gave a wave of the link and started off.

  Amber paused just long enough to open her smock low over her breasts, muttered swiftly to Mrs. Buxted, "Watch my bird," and then picking up her skirts she hurried after him. Her heart was pounding as though she had been going to be presented at Court.

  Chapter Ten

  Barbara Palmer was a woman of no uncertain desires or ambitions. Almost from the moment she had been born she had known what she wanted and had usually contrived to get it, whatever the cost to herself or others. She had no morals, knew no qualms, did not trouble herself with a conscience. Her character and personality were as glittering, as elemental, as barbaric as was her beauty. And now, just twenty-one years old, she had found what she wanted more than anything else on earth.