by Barbara Kyle
He looked up toward the shaft of sunlight. “I’ll leave behind a trunk of costumes, a fine brass horn, and a little bay gelding, and all of it shall be Joan’s. She will sell the lot, of course, and find another man. And I pray she will be happy. As for me, I have no wish to cheat the hangman. For, truly, I have not the heart to live without my Joan.” He cast an uncertain glance at Thornleigh and asked in a surprisingly timid voice. “Can you understand?”
Thornleigh thought of Honor’s festering wound, imagined her dying on the ship bound for Antwerp. “Yes,” he said.
Ives closed his eyes and murmured, “I thank you, sir, for that.”
The door swung open and a bulky, disheveled official stepped inside. He beckoned to people in the corridor. “Come in, ladies,” he said, “and do not be afeared. The villains are securely chained. They’ll not be harming you.” He stood at the door, wiping his nose on his sleeve, while people filed in past him. There were about twenty men and women, and they shuffled into a tight semicircle in front of the prisoners.
“Oh, Lord, not again,” Ives groaned to Thornleigh above the sound of scuffling feet. “Our inquisitive public. And that turd there,” he said, nodding at the official collecting coins from each person as they entered, “is Master Andrew Alexander, our jailer. These ladies and gentlemen are paying him for a gawp at us before we die. A different batch came to the chapel yesterday to watch the boy and me stand by our coffins and be preached at. The boy puked then, too. On the priest’s boots.”
“Look your fill, ladies and gentlemen,” Alexander was declaring in the bored tone of one repeating a set speech. “The depraved faces before you belong to the wickedest blackguards as ever stalked the God-fearing streets of London. Notice, if you will—”
“Bless my soul, if it isn’t Rob!” Ives said in an astonished whisper as the jailer loudly carried on. Ives nudged Thornleigh, with a twinkle in his eye. “Rob’s my partner, sir. That young scamp in the green cap.” Thornleigh followed Ives’s gaze and spotted the young man, a pin-eyed fellow with a stringy mustache.
“Now, this young ‘prentice here,” Alexander intoned, pointing out the miserable boy chained in the corner, “he robbed his master’s strongbox while the trusting gentleman sat at supper.”
The spectators murmured their disapproval of such a gross violation of the natural order. One man, to impress the girl he was with, leaned close to the condemned boy and mimed a noose jerking his head to one side while his tongue lolled. The boy blanched and urinated in his breeches. Some of the spectators laughed, some made faces of revulsion. Alexander claimed back their attention by launching into a detailed description of the procedure of the imminent hangings. The spectators stared, or crossed themselves, or chattered. Alexander’s lecture droned on.
“Oh, Rob’s coming here is a treat!” Ives whispered with a wicked grin. “Come, let’s have some sport.”
In a sudden, explosive movement Ives jumped to a crouched stance on the platform and let out a bellow like a wounded ox. “Woe to Rome!” he cried. With his chained wrist he banged his temple like a man in despair. He wailed:
“Oh, woe betide th’asassin’s bloody hand,
That ever dared take up the traitor’s stand!
And Brutus will not live to see the day
That Rome will blink this faithlessness away!”
The spectators stood in amazement at Ives’s outburst. Thornleigh, too, stared up at the actor. Ives carried on declaiming, and it soon became clear that he had transformed himself into the Roman, Brutus, overcome with guilt after murdering Caesar, and about to take his own life with his imaginary sword. As Ives moaned and ranted his way through a suicide soliloquy, the spectators watched, rapt. Thornleigh caught sight of the green-capped young man, Rob, slipping beside a gentleman wearing a voluminous robe. Just then, Ives thudded to his knees to deliver a booming plea to the Roman gods and raised high his invisible sword, ready to plunge it into his breast. His hands quivered. Tears streamed from his eyes. The people craned their necks and shuffled closer to catch the extraordinary performance. Thornleigh saw Rob’s hand flash from the gentleman’s robe to the inside of Rob’s doublet. An enterprising partnership, indeed, he thought with a flicker of amusement. The actor draws the crowd and the pickpocket collects the price of admission.
Ives, now wavering on his knees in Brutus’s death throes, swung up his tear-stained face to cry out a last request of the gods that all his worldly goods be divided between his wife and Rome. Then he looked straight out at his young partner, fixing him with a menacing glare, and wailed with all the intensity of the foregoing lament:
“ ‘Yes, half of all these riches shall be Joan’s,
Or God will see that Satan fries your bones!’ ”
There were a few puzzled looks at these words, but Ives concluded with a resounding quatrain of such wrenching pathos that every eye was again riveted on Brutus’s desperate last gasp. Ives pitched over on his back, lifted his head with a final guilt-choked, “Caesar!” froze wide-eyed as if he had seen the face of God, and then collapsed.
There was silence. Then the jailer himself murmured appreciatively, “Bravely done, old Jack.” The spectators burst into a warm chatter of praise. Ives rose and smiled with studied humility. Some of the people came forward to compliment him. Others, more interested in the actual deaths about to be enacted, sneaked in for a closer look at the pitiful young apprentice.
The jailer, Alexander, came and stood over Thornleigh. “You’re the felon just in from Essex? Thornleigh, is it?”
Thornleigh, reclaimed to reality, said nothing.
“It’s two and six for easement of the chain,” Alexander said. “Can you pay?”
Thornleigh dug inside his tunic, brought out the purse Isabel had given him in Colchester, and opened it. Alexander peered down at the abundant contents. Listlessly, Thornleigh counted out the coins.
Alexander dropped his brusque manner and smiled as he pocketed the fee. He took up his keys to unlock Thornleigh’s chain. “You will be wanting to bide on the masters’ side, I warrant, Master Thornleigh?” he asked.
Thornleigh shrugged. He didn’t care where he was put.
“The masters’ side it is, then,” Alexander confirmed with a smile. “Tell me, sir, do you play an instrument?”
Thornleigh looked up in mild surprise.
“I take it you do not,” Alexander said. “Well, it’s no matter, sir.” He let the chain swing loose and pocketed his keys. “I hope you’ll do me the honor of joining me and my good wife at dinner, sir?” he asked. “We’d be glad of your company, so we would.”
Thornleigh said nothing.
“Then it’s settled,” Alexander said. “Come along now. We’ll get you comfortably settled and then we’ll dine.” He picked up Thornleigh’s cloak for him, took him solicitously by the elbow, and led him through the group of spectators. “Viewing’s over, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out brusquely. “Everybody out. The hangings commence in an hour.”
Thornleigh turned at the door to look back at Ives. The actor was sitting again, his legs casually crossed, and was watching his audience depart. His second to last audience, Thornleigh thought. He saw, behind the actor’s studied pose of detachment, deep inside the care-webbed eyes, an unmistakable glint of fear. Thornleigh knew there was nothing he could say in farewell that would not be mere hollow words. Instead, he lifted his hands and applauded. Ives’s face snapped toward him. His lower lip trembled for a moment. Then he stood, gathering his dignity, and bowed his head low to Thornleigh in gracious acknowledgment.
Andrew Alexander was a man who loved the musical arts. Every day at noon he and his wife dined with a handful of like-minded gentlemen prisoners while one of them skilled on the lute or the rebeck played for the company’s enjoyment. Alexander was explaining all this to Thornleigh as he contentedly watched his wife pour Thornleigh a goblet of malmsey wine.
They and five other paying gentlemen prisoners sat at the carved oak dining table in
a goldsmith inmate’s private chamber, listening to a lute duet. The two players—one, as Alexander explained, a merchant for debt, the other a master baker awaiting trial for beating his apprentice to death—stood by the crackling log fire in the grate and plucked out a lively tune. The paneled chamber was cozy, the fire bright, the dinner succulent-smelling, the company convivial. Alexander beamed at his newest guest, Thornleigh, seated beside him.
Thornleigh took the goblet from Mistress Alexander’s pudgy hand. She smiled through the dusty white paint on her sagging cheeks, and batted her eyes at him. Alexander nudged Thornleigh’s elbow. “Eat up, sir!” he heartily enjoined. Thornleigh looked down at his plate. Alexander had piled it with steaming food.
Thornleigh took a mouthful of bread. He had no appetite. He stared at the dishes of stewed partridge, smoked eels, and pickled quinces spread before him. It all looked as rich as the fare at London’s finest inn, the Crane. The Crane … it was there, not quite two weeks ago, that he had begged Honor to leave England. But in the end he’d succumbed to her entreaties to wait. And because of his decision she was now fighting for her life. The bread in his mouth tasted like sand.
Alexander, captivated by the gay music, was tapping a dirty fingernail on the table in time with the rhythm. “This tune’s a treat, eh, Master Thornleigh? What is it, Rivers?” he asked the goldsmith across the table. “I’ve never heard it before.”
The goldsmith—in Newgate for selling adulterated gold plate—was pushing a quince into his mouth already stuffed with partridge, and he answered with some pride while he chewed, “A new composition by the Queen’s choirmaster. My journeyman brought me the prick-sheet yesterday.”
“From the court, my, my!” Mistress Alexander said with great satisfaction, licking her wine-stained lips. “There, Master Thornleigh,” she cooed, toasting him, “you won’t find better entertainment than this anywhere, lest you pop up in Whitehall Palace itself!”
Thornleigh ignored her. The merry mood seemed a mockery of the hollowness in his heart. He gulped down the full goblet of malmsey, then poured himself another, seeking oblivion. But he found none. Trying to hide from the images of his son lying dead, his wife in pain, his daughter violated, he was only assaulted by other guilts.
The Spaniard in Colchester jail, for one. The fellow had tried to help him escape, apparently as part of a strategy to get out himself. But the plan, whatever it had been, had been scuppered by the brawl, and the Spaniard would surely be hanged; perhaps he already had been. Thornleigh felt bad about that.
And then there was the escape plan itself. Who had been behind it? Who had hired the Spaniard to make contact with him? Someone was coming to the taproom to get him away, the Spaniard had said … but who? Who would have known the old password, to pass it along to the Spaniard? Who from the old days was left? Leonard Legge from the Crane seemed the only possible candidate. Especially since Thornleigh had told Isabel to contact Legge to help send her and Honor off to Antwerp. And if it was Legge, what had he done when he heard the jail rescue plan had miscarried? Had he made it back to London without bringing suspicion on himself?
Thornleigh shook his head. These things were unknowable, beyond his control. And—a worse guilt—even beyond his interest. Let the world shift as it would. He longed only to get his death over and done with. He looked around in disgust. Die here? Apparently, only through a surfeit of luxurious living.
The musicians’ lively tune had ended and had slid into a solemn air, a strain both sweet and plaintive, melancholy enough to make even the stoutest heart vibrate with nameless regret. And Thornleigh could name his regret only too well. He knocked back another goblet of wine.
Alexander’s eyes had misted over at the melancholy music, but he smiled as he beckoned to a large man who stood in the doorway. It was a prisoner from the masters’ ward who had pointed out to Thornleigh the bed assigned him, had given him some candles and soap, and explained to him Newgate’s daily procedures. Thornleigh had barely listened.
“He’s right here,” Alexander pleasantly called out to the prisoner, placing a friendly arm around Thornleigh’s shoulder. Thornleigh pulled back and poured himself another goblet. He wanted only to be left alone to drink.
The prisoner came to Thornleigh’s side. “That’ll be four shillings and three pence, sir.”
Thornleigh blinked up at him, beginning to feel the effects of the wine. “What?”
“Garnish, sir,” Alexander explained amiably. “For the services this cellarman supplied you. It is the custom here.”
Thornleigh shrugged. Fees for every damn thing. He dug into his tunic for his money. He could not feel the purse. He rummaged in the other side of his tunic. Not there. He stood and tried a methodical search of every place in his clothing the purse could be. By this time, most of the company at the table were watching him. Thornleigh poked and patted every fold, but finally said, “It’s gone. My money.”
Alexander scowled.
Thornleigh said, “I must have dropped it some—” He stopped, realizing the truth. “The pickpocket.”
“How’s that?” the prisoner asked angrily, as if Thornleigh had accused him of the crime.
“In the condemned hold,” Thornleigh explained, “that actor’s partner was fleecing the spectators. He must have fleeced me, too.”
“Pay up!” the prisoner said fiercely. He grabbed Thornleigh’s throat. Thornleigh chopped the man’s arm, breaking his hold, and took a step back. But Alexander said, “That’s right, Connors, get him and hold him!”
The surprising command caught Thornleigh off guard, and the prisoner threw an arm around his neck and grappled him. Thornleigh considered putting up a fight, but the wine was making him unsteady. Besides, he could not summon the will. He slumped. Let them do what they wanted.
Alexander drew himself up like a judge. “You owe the cellarman his garnish and you owe me for this food and wine,” he pronounced. “If you cannot pay in coin, we’ll have something in kind. That, for a start,” he said, pointing to Thornleigh’s furred cloak heaped beside him on the floor.
Thornleigh kicked the cloak over to Alexander. Let them take it and leave him alone. Let everyone just leave him alone!
“The cloak for the cellarman,” Alexander went on, “and your tunic for me.”
The prisoner unbuttoned Thornleigh’s tunic and he offered no resistance. But as he pulled his arms free, something fell to the floor. He looked down at it. Honor’s letter, the one she’d given him to deliver to Edward Sydenham just before Grenville came on his murderous rampage. He’d forgotten he had it. He pounced on the letter to retrieve it.
“What’s that?” Alexander asked. “His purse? Get it!”
“Just a paper,” the prisoner said.
Thornleigh stuffed the letter into his shirt. He whirled on the prisoner, ready now to fight. To hold on to this letter—this scrap of Honor—he was ready to fight anyone.
But Alexander had no use for the letter. Nor, anymore, for Thornleigh.
The cellarman shoved him into the beggars’ ward. The place matched Thornleigh’s vision of hell. The gloom seemed phosphorescent. It hung thickly throughout a labyrinth of cracked pillars, cobwebbed arches, and stone walls slimed with green mold. In the many nooks and crannies, dozens of shadowy bodies lay prostrate in misery. The stench of excrement made Thornleigh’s wine-sodden stomach lurch. All around him were the faint clang of chains and the low, bestial moans of despair.
The cellarman left him. The sound of his footsteps faded and the iron door to the ward slammed shut. Thornleigh stood, uncertain where to go. He noticed two men hunkered beside a tiny cooking fire, watching him. One held a stick with a morsel of meat over the fire, and the other smiled at Thornleigh through the thin curtain of smoke. Grease from the meat dripped with a hiss into the fire. Thornleigh approached them. The man with the stick quickly set it down, picked up a slingshot, fitted a stone, and fired it at Thornleigh. The sharp missile struck his neck. The other man kept smiling inane
ly. Thornleigh backed away.
He went under an arch and into a section of the ward that was even darker. It seemed to hold fewer people, too, though there were shadowy humps everywhere that moved. He passed a scrawny woman squatting, scratching at the earthen floor.
He made his way toward a dark, empty nook and sat down against a pillar. The spot reeked of mildewed straw. The stone pillar was icy cold on his back, as was the dank floor. He shivered in his shirt and breeches. Panic suddenly flooded his brain: could he survive this cold? Then the panic rolled away in a wash of supreme indifference. Freezing, he’d heard, was a painless, quiet death. Better than the hangman’s noose.
His sight was becoming accustomed to the gloom. He could now make out a group of people crouched in a quiet circle in the middle of the fetid space. There were about a half-dozen of them. For a moment he wondered if the cold, combined with the wine, was fogging his brain already, because all the people in the group looked like dwarfs. Then he realized—children, maybe five or six years old. He knew that women giving birth in prison kept their babies with them, often for years. Still, the sight was disconcerting. What kind of children did such surroundings breed?
He glanced at a prone form asleep on the floor, an emaciated man. Shock knifed through him as he realized it was a corpse. The hands and nose and ears were speckled with black. Thornleigh saw another prisoner sitting propped against a pillar. Sitting, but dead. And spotted, as the other dead man was, like a decayed piece of fruit. Revulsion crawled over Thornleigh’s skin. He was in a ward half full of jail fever corpses.
One of the children coughed softly, and Thornleigh looked back at the silent little group. What were the children playing at so earnestly? What kind of game could have such appeal in this den of death? Suddenly, as if a strict parent had come and declared the playtime over, the group broke apart and the children scurried away, scuttling behind pillars, around corners. And Thornleigh saw what had kept them so engrossed at the center of their circle.
