This individual could have sat, or slumped, for a proverbial picture entitled The Price of Indolence or The Perils of Inebriation or similar. In the said picture an escaping captive (me) would have been sneaking past him. Such is the odd working of the human mind that I almost resented his neglect of duty. Such is the even odder working of my mind that I considered waking him up to show him my ticket of leave. After all I was William Topcourt, the thrice married man, fully entitled to quit this place. Had not my wives paid good money so as to get their hands on me? But common sense prevailed. There were still two more chambers to pass through after this one. I tiptoed across the room, alert for any change in the sound of snoring. None came, although my friend did blend a rippling fart together with the noise coming from his nose-horn as if he were trying out different bass notes at once.
I paused at the second door. This was the entrance to the middle lobby, where sat the guard who’d been so mightily impressed by Constable Doggett’s recitation of my crimes that, for an instant, he had ceased scraping the dirt from under his fingernails. I made to ease open the door. It didn’t move. Gently at first, then with increasing desperation, I pushed and pulled at the handle. The door, which was a solid one, stayed shut. I tried to remember whether the door had been locked when I’d been escorted this way a few days ago. I thought of knocking on it and waiting for someone to open it up from the other side. I thought of waking the snoring guard and demanding that he release me. I thought of creeping up on him and detaching the key from the ring which he wore on his belt – true, I couldn’t see a key or a ring or a belt but I was sure that he wearing them. After all, he was a gaoler. A gaoler on the playhouse stage would have been equipped with a very large set of keys to jangle and flourish.
Then I thought that I should examine the door more carefully. In the very feeble candlelight I noticed what hadn’t been obvious before, that the door was bolted top and bottom. An odd prison, this place, where the entrances were secured on the wrong side, as if to stop people getting in. Then I thought of the Counter’s previous incarnation as St Margaret’s church. In a church you sometimes have to keep people out, but you very rarely need to keep them in, much as some parsons might like to. Anyway this was more to do with the sexton than the parson since it would have been one of the sexton’s tasks to ensure that the pyx and plate and other valuables were protected from thieves and he’d naturally bolt and lock up from inside before leaving the church, probably by an unobtrusive door in the crypt or vestry. I remembered as a boy accompanying John, my father’s sexton, while he made his rounds, locking, bolting, fastening. ‘Fast bind, fast find’ was the proverb that governed in this case, as it did for Master Benwell in my old lodgings. Therefore the church doors had to be secured on the inside.
All this crossed my mind in a few instants. I don’t suppose that I’d been in this chamber with the snoring, farting guard for more than half a minute.
Swiftly I slid back the bolts, top and bottom. My luck held. The bolts, well greased, moved without a scrape or a squeak. The guard rumbled on, heedless, untroubled. I pulled at the door and it swung inwards. The room beyond was dark – and empty. There was no guard excavating the dirt from under his nails at knife-point. There was no one there at all.
Now one more room remained to pass through, the outer porch. This chamber was occupied. A thin line of light was visible under the far door. A sudden bark of laughter from beyond it made me jump. In the person of Master Topcourt I strode forward. I breathed a quick prayer to the patron saint of players (St Genesius, if you’re interested). With my heart thudding in my chest, I knocked on the door and opened it.
Two guards were present, the same two in fact who’d been sitting in the porch on the day I was inducted into the Counter prison. They were still smoking their long-stemmed pipes, still perched on stools either side of a chest on which lay a scatter of greasy cards and little piles of coin. For all I knew they hadn’t stirred for the last four days, except to answer the calls of nature. This room was better lit but there was an obscuring, eye-itching fug of pipe-smoke and chimney smoke.
The lantern-jawed guard eventually glanced up.
Pronouncing the word ‘Topcourt’, I held out the precious piece of paper, the ‘ticket of leave’. My hand shook slightly.
The guard was evidently used to such documents for he gave it a fairly cursory glance with his bloodshot eyes before passing it across to his gaming partner. I doubted that either of them could read, although they recognized the stamp of officialdom when they saw it. This other man laid his cards face down, screwed up his eyes and held the portion of the document containing the magistrate’s signature and seal under his bulbous, spongy nose. He sniffed deeply at the wax seal, as if he might thus inhale the majesty of the law. So far not a word had been spoken apart from my giving a false name.
Then the second gaoler grunted and handed the paper back to the first fellow and returned his attention to his hand. I licked my lips and attempted a smile – because a prisoner departing from a gaol should surely be glad – but it was only a grimace that came out.
“How do you call yourself, master?” said Lantern-jaw.
“William Topcourt.”
“Well, what have you done?”
Done? What had I done? For a moment I couldn’t remember.
“Women,” I said.
The gaoler with the spongy nose flicked his eyes in my direction with interest. I stroked my grimy cheek, seeing how my uneasiness could be turned to advantage.
“What’s your offence, man?” said Lantern-jaw, still holding tight to my ticket of leave with one hand and using the other to point me out with the stem of his pipe.
“Women are my offence, I say. Three times over. I am married three times over. William Topcourt is my name.”
“Oh, we have heard of you,” said the other gaoler. “You are a most notorious adulterer.”
“A limb-lifter and an arch fornicator.”
“They’ll be making a ballad out of you next.”
I looked abashed, as if the prospect of fame was unpleas-ing. The room grew hotter. The folds of my coat or cloak hung heavy about me.
“So cheer yourself . . . Topcourt. Leave those long faces behind.”
“You do not have three wives waiting for you outside, sir,” I said, trying to imitate Topcourt’s resigned intonation.
“Are they outside?”
“Round a dark corner, I expect,” I said.
“You’d be better off locked up, wouldn’t you then,” said Sponge-nose.
I gestured helplessly towards the signed and sealed paper as if to say, it’s out of my hands now.
“My wives, they think otherwise and have purchased my liberty.”
“It’s not you should be locked up anyway, Master Top-court,” said the first gaoler.
“I am mostly of your mind, sir,” I said mournfully.
“Not you but your pintle should be locked up, out of women’s reach.”
“That one is truly a case for a prick-case,” said the other.
Now I smiled, smiled weakly, as Topcourt would have done. There are some men – most men perhaps – who’d be glad enough to have their hardihood with three wives celebrated and even laughed over but I judged that William Topcourt wasn’t among them.
“One thing, master,” said Lantern-jaw. “Enlighten me now. Which of your three wives is going to couch with you tonight? Or is it more than one that you’ll be having?”
I saw the glint of envy, of prurient curiosity, in his bloated eyes. And the other one’s nose would have been all a-quiver if it hadn’t already been so swollen up and spongy. Be careful, I told myself, don’t overplay this. These men are quite capable of keeping you inside out of spite, in order to stop you couching with anyone at all.
“That depends,” I said, “on which of my wives has the biggest – ”
“Thingy?”
“Nonny-no?”
“The biggest stick,” I said. “I’m sorry to disappoin
t you, gentlemen, but I won’t be ‘having’ anyone tonight. You wouldn’t credit the brutal treatment I will receive at the hands of my wives. You would not think that the ladies could be so barbarous.”
I shivered, despite the heat and the enveloping cloak. I stroked furiously at my cheek and then tugged at my nose.
“Like I said, you’re safer in here,” said the second gaoler.
“I must take my punishment like a man,” I said. “I am a sinner. I have done wrong and cannot avoid retribution. It is my fate. Though my wives beat me with rods and canes I will not cry out. I am a changed man and walk with God now.”
As I’d half hoped, all this talk of punishment and sinning appeared to make them lose interest. They would be receiving no bedchamber titbits from me. They reached for their cards again and I cleared my throat and indicated the ticket of leave. Lantern-jaw handed it to me. I shuffled, but shuffled purposefully, in the direction of the double church doors which were the final barrier between me and the street.
Lantern-jaw waited until Sponge-nose had played his hand and then he played one of his own and only after that did he deposit the remainder of his cards alongside his pipe on the chest. Wearily he raised himself to his feet. I now saw that a pendulous iron key hung from his waist. He stroked it lasciviously and then waggled it up and down.
“Maybe your wives would like a touch of this, eh, Master Topcourt? Can you speak for them?”
I leaned forward and pretended to inspect his instrument.
“I fear they could not accommodate such a massy engine, sir, and one with so many intricate wards too. I could not hope to compete with it.”
This piece of complimentary filth seemed to do the trick. The gaoler inserted the key – it was large, almost requiring two hands to manoeuvre it – and, rolling his bloodshot eyes at me, twisted it in the keyhole. Then he seized a great iron ring and pulled back one of the double oak doors, which creaked on its hinges.
I had a glimpse of the outside or, more accurately, a whiff of it. It must have been raining because the sound of pattering drops and the fresh smell of a shower slipped through the half-open door together with a draught of cold air. It’s odd, but until that moment I hadn’t thought much about getting out of the Counter, only about negotiating the various ante-chambers to it. Now – with the world only a few feet away from where I was standing – a violent desire to quit this miserable place suddenly overcame me. I only just stopped myself from bolting through the narrow gap. Instead, pulling my cloak tight about my person and clutching my precious ticket of leave, I went to ease through the space.
And then the lantern-jawed gaoler put his shoulder to the door and closed it once more. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. It had been too easy so far, too straightforward. The door shut with a thud. Laboriously he retwisted the key in the keyhole.
“Not so quick . . .”
Folding his arms, he leaned against the door. He looked pleased at whatever confusion of expressions I was wearing on my face. Despair – pleading – anger. No acting now. The prize had been dangled before my face then whisked away.
“Who are you?” said this gaoler.
My stomach lurched. They’d known all the time who I was, these two. They’d been toying with me. For an instant I was on the edge of admitting the truth but I checked myself.
“You know that – that I am William Topcourt.”
“What are you, though?” said the other gaoler, who was still occupied with his cards. I took a tiny grain of comfort from the fact that he hadn’t shifted from his perch. I calculated my chances of springing at the insolent fellow by the entrance, twisting round the great key, tugging the door open and making my escape into the street. No chance. The two of them would be on me in a trice.
“What am I?” I echoed.
“Describe yourself, William Topcourt,” said Lantern-jaw.
I began to suspect that there was some game going on here, a game to whose rules I wasn’t privy.
“Well, a fornicator, yes, I freely admit it,” I gabbled. “A sinner and a malefactor. A prisoner for my crimes.”
“And who are we?” said the man with the cards in his hand.
“You gentlemen are my gaolers,” I said, adding the right note of deference.
“Entitled to . . . ?”
Ah! I had it now. The fact that I understood them must have shown on my face but the gaolers, tired of beating about the bush, now grew more direct and fired off their requirements like bullets.
“Peck.”
“Shot.”
“Brass.”
“Coin.”
Of course, it was a game that we were playing. An extremely old one, the oldest one in the book. I could have kicked myself for my slowness, for my failure to grasp the single rule of the game, the single and simple rule. The rule is: you pay. Win or lose, you pay.
“Forgive me, sirs,” I said, fumbling under the cloak for my purse.
Fortunately I hadn’t spent much of the money which Jack Wilson and the rest of the Company had so generously supplied – or rather not all of it had yet been extorted from me. I drew out a pair of half-crowns, which seemed to be the standard rate in this gaol, and solemnly presented one to the spongy-nosed gentleman sitting on a stool and the other to the lantern-jawed gentleman leaning against the church doors. A swift glance, then the coins were palmed and disappeared.
“You have no angels about you,” said the man by the door, pointing to the region of my waist where he’d spotted my purse. He was referring to those old coins, the ones that were often counterfeited and that Master Shakespeare was so fond of making puns about.
“No angel but only a little devil down there,” I said.
And – at long last! – this salacious answer seemed to meet requirements. Without another bawdy remark, without another word, Lantern-jaw turned the key of the door for a second time, swung it back on its creaky hinges and then, with mock ceremony, bowed me out into the street.
I slid past him, expecting at every moment another summons, a further demand for cash. None came. I walked, slowly at first then at an increasing pace, away from the building that had once been St Margaret’s church. Behind me I heard the door of the Counter prison thud shut.
Despite Master Topcourt’s topcoat I was soon damp from the drizzling rain which seemed to insinuate its way underneath, but I didn’t care about this. I halted, breathed deep several times to clear my lungs of the prison air and turned my face up to the night sky. It was cloudy but I didn’t care about that either. At some point while I’d been inside, the fog which seemed have been clinging to London for weeks – tighter than a miser to his money-bags, closer than a new bride to her groom, more desperately than a condemned man to his life (take your pick) – had decided to let go of the city. Free! Free!
Although the outlook was very bleak – since I was, essentially, a fugitive from justice – nothing could take away from this brief sense of liberation. Yes, it was true that I had lost everything. I could never rejoin the Chamberlain’s Company and would surely have to flee from the city and resign myself to a runaway’s life. But even the prospect of living wild and unprovided for didn’t seem so awful at this moment. Or not so awful as a long period cooped up in the Counter . . . or the much worse prospect of dangling from the hempen rope of Tyburn tree. Near where I stood, gulping down these heady draughts of freedom, was the Tabard Inn. I even considered having a celebratory ale to mark my release from captivity. I think that I was not entirely in my right mind at this moment.
“Master Topcourt!”
I jumped.
“Nick!
A man’s voice.
“Master Revill!”
A woman’s voice.
From round the corner of Kent Street came two shapes. It was too dark to recognize them but I already knew who they were.
Jack Wilson came up and peered into my face until he was quite satisfied.
“It is you, Nick. We’ve been waiting. I thought they might have let out th
e wrong man.”
“They did let out the wrong man.”
“The wrong wrong man, then.”
The second shape drew near.
“Master Revill,” she said, resting a hand on my arm.
“Mrs Milford,” I said. “I – I have not had the chance to condole with you on your loss.”
“My husband is dead,” she said simply. “But not at your hands.”
I experienced that prickling on the back of my neck which I’d had after the Troilus and Cressida performance. But at the same time I felt a little burst of gratitude because she was so confident of my innocence.
“You know who did it?” I said.
“No,” she said. “But you shall find out.”
We must have made an odd trio, standing there in the middle of the street on a drizzly night, having a whispered discussion about murder. As my eyes got used to the dark I was able to pick out features, Jack’s nervous smile, Lucy Milford’s fixed gaze.
“It was Lucy’s wish to get you released, Nick,” Jack said.
I turned towards Lucy.
“I know. Thank you. I read your note. You have both put yourselves at risk to preserve my worthless corpse.”
“When you told me about William Topcourt,” said Jack, “and how he didn’t want to leave the prison and when I saw the way one of his wives was treating him – well, it wasn’t difficult to slip back again afterwards even if I had to oil a few palms on the way. And then I had a talk with Topcourt. You were right about him. He is a good fellow and readily agreed. He didn’t want any payment. He would have paid to stay inside, I think. He already had his ticket of leave and hadn’t dared to tell his wife about it. One of his wives.”
Alms for Oblivion Page 21
