by M C Beaton
Colonel Anderson strode in next and looked curiously at the chained figure of the girl on the floor. Polly recognized him and her heart beat hard. The colonel’s presence could only mean one thing. The marquess had not rejected her. And the marquess was great and powerful. Hope flooded her face with color and made her large eyes sparkle.
Goodness! Here is danger indeed, thought the colonel. My poor friend must be protected at all costs. Such beauty would turn the mind of most men—but not I.
He asked her politely if she were comfortable. He offered her a purse which she first refused, then begged him to send to Silas’s address. He talked of the weather in the streets and the politics of the nation and the iniquities of the French. The sparkle died from Polly’s eyes and her face became pale and wan. When he rose to go, she said urgently, “Is there news of the marquess of Canonby?”
Colonel Anderson looked down at her haughtily. “The only news I know is that he is ecstatically happy and is to be wed to a certain Miss Ponsonby.”
“He did not speak of me?”
“My dear Miss Jones, a man deeply in love does not concern himself with the affairs of a common thief.” And with that, the colonel turned and left.
Outside the grim walls of Newgate, Colonel Anderson sighed with relief. It had all been very distasteful, but it was all for the best. He mounted his horse and rode to Silas’s address in Shoreditch. Mrs. Brewer was startled when a tall gentleman rudely thrust a purse at her, climbed up on his horse, and rode off without a word.
The colonel went straight to St. James’s Square, where the marquess was waiting.
“Well?” demanded the marquess eagerly.
“My poor friend,” said the colonel, shaking his head. “You had best sit down. This is going to be painful.”
The marquess sat down slowly.
“Now,” said the colonel. “I visited Miss Jones. I could not get much sense out of her, for some of her criminal friends had come to call and all were loud and drunk. She is unrepentant. She said she stole that purse and cares not. My friend, you have been sadly misled. She is a hardened criminal who consorts with hardened criminals.”
The marquess put his hand to his brow. He remembered the unsavory Jake. He remembered the way Polly had smiled up at that one-eyed monstrosity. He felt sick.
“Let us put it all behind us,” said the colonel cheerfully. “We go to the Ponsonbys’ rout this eve, do we not? Ah, the fair Miss Ponsonby. Now, there is enchantment indeed!”
“Present my compliments to the Ponsonbys,” said the marquess heavily. “I shall not go.”
“Fustian, I beg you …”
“I said I shall not go,” said the marquess harshly. “In the name of God, leave me alone!”
Next day, almost as soon as it was daylight, Polly was declared ready to receive visitors. This lack of personal privacy was, for her, the hardest part of her imprisonment. A jailor was just making a final check of her padlocks and fetters when another jailor put his head round the door and said, “It’s them again. Those young ladies. Don’t seem natural. Shouldn’t be here and I’ll swear the earl and countess don’t know of it.”
“Send them in,” grunted the first jailor.
Polly looked up as the Meresly twins entered her cell. They were dressed alike, each wearing that informal style of gown called the Trollopee which was loose with an unboned bodice, trained overskirt and short petticoat. They both wore bèrgere straw hats over lace caps. They knelt on the floor on either side of her. “You are too near the prisoner, ladies,” warned one of the jailors.
Josephine threw him a heavy purse. “Count that and it will stop you interfering in our conversation, fellow. We have brought her proper shoes,” Josephine went on, unwrapping a parcel. “See, you can watch while we put them on her poor feet. The ones she is wearing have such ugly high heels, they cannot be comfortable.”
The jailor untied the purse and gasped at the sight of the gold within. The other jailor joined him and they began to divide the money.
Emily took off Polly’s high-heeled shoes and Josephine put a pair of flat shoes like dancing pumps on her feet. Polly winced and stifled an exclamation as she felt inside each shoe a sharp object. Josephine pinched her arm. “Well, Miss Jones,” she said, “are you not going to thank us?”
“Thank you,” said Polly, wondering what was in the shoes. “You are most kind, but I have little opportunity to move let alone walk.”
“I am sure you will have some exercise soon,” said Emily with a giggle. Polly thought of the dance of death on the scaffold at Tyburn and shuddered.
“We have not had much opportunity to help you,” said Josephine. “About Meg Jones, I mean. Mama is grievous ill and papa has suffered a minor apoplexy. Our home is like the grave and just as amusing.”
“It must distress you to have both your parents so ill,” said Polly.
Josephine yawned delicately. “But of course,” she said. “For it means we do not go to balls or parties. Très ennuyant, je vous assure, my dear Miss Jones. La, but we saw a monstrous funny play t’other week, did we not, Emily?”
Both sisters began to giggle and chatter about the play. Polly wondered whether they were a little mad, for they went on as if they were in a drawing room taking tea, rather than in the strongest and bleakest cell in Newgate.
At last they rose to leave, and still chattering and laughing, they made their way out.
“I feel immensely strong and brave now, Emily,” said Josephine as they climbed into their carriage. “I am no longer afraid of papa or mama. Are you?”
“Not in the slightest,” said Emily. “I really do not think we need be frightened of anyone ever again after what we have achieved this day.”
At two o’clock, Polly’s dinner was brought in. When she had finished it, her jailors checked her chains and fetters and padlocks. One of the men asked if she would like a visit later, for it was the custom to leave prisoners in isolation for the rest of the day and night once dinner was over, but they had made good money out of Polly and felt they owed her a kindness. Polly shook her head. She wanted to be alone. She was glad the day’s visits were over. She dreaded to see Mrs. Blanchard’s face peering round the door. She was heartsore that neither Barney nor Jake had troubled to call. She would not even admit to herself that the marquess of Canonby’s absence was what hurt most of all.
When the jailors had retired, Polly slid off her new shoes. In one was a small thin file and in the other an oddly shaped key. The sudden rush of excitement and hope that Polly felt almost made her sick. Her heart was hammering so hard, she felt sure the jailors somewhere outside might be able to hear it. She took several deep breaths. Then a wave of depression as violent as the elation of a moment before engulfed her. This was some sort of skeleton key, but she was sure it would be almost impossible for anyone un-practiced in the art of lock-picking to use it. Even if she managed to unlock her fetters, this slim key would be useless on the door, which she knew was heavily bolted on the outside.
She sat for a long time, her head on her knees. Then she raised her head and looked at the Bible Silas had given her. It was a small leather-bound edition. It must have cost Silas a lot of money, thought Polly, as a ray of sun shone through the barred window of her cell on the smooth leather of the cover.
Still looking at the Bible, she fumbled with one hand for the key, inserted it in one of the padlocks and, forcing herself not to think of anything at all, she began to twist and turn it. There was a click and the padlock sprang apart. Polly took a long slow breath. Still looking at the Bible, understanding instinctively that lock-picking should be done by feel and touch rather than by sight, she began to work on the others until one by one the padlocks fell open. She picked up the file and sawed at the chain between her manacled legs. The chain was thin and not very strong and soon parted.
She hoisted the manacles up on her legs and pulled her stockings over them to hold them in place. Very slowly, she rose to her feet.
Poll
y walked to the window, stood on a chair and looked out. She could only see the high walls of the prison, but she knew that far below her was the street with people walking about, unfettered people, free people.
Then she got down from the chair, walked to the fireplace, crouched down and looked up the chimney. No fire had been lit in that room for a long time.
She turned round, picked up the Bible and opened it. In it, Silas had written, “To Polly Jones. God bless and keep you, Silas Brewer.” Polly tore out the page with the inscription on it. If she ever got free, there must be nothing left behind which might cause the law to call on Silas.
She gave a last look round about and began to climb. There were old rungs inside the chimney which had been put there for the use of the sweep’s climbing boys. Her head struck an obstacle halfway up, and balancing on one of the rungs, she felt with her hand. An iron bar had been driven across inside the chimney.
With an almost manic strength. Polly seized the bar and pulled with all her might. The rusty bar cracked and Polly fell back down the chimney followed by a shower of broken bricks and soot.
She waited, her heart beating hard. Outside, opposite her cell, was a door leading to the quarters of the Master Debtors, who might betray her to the turnkeys. After what seemed an age, Polly slowly began to climb again.
She crawled out through the fireplace into the room above her cell. Measuring about twenty feet by ten feet and known as the Red Room, it had not been entered or used since 1716 when rebels had been imprisoned there after the defeat of the Lancashire Jacobites at Preston. Dust lay thick on the floor. The light outside barely penetrated through the tiny high window on the wall, and Polly, with her fingertips on the walls, felt her way round the cell to the door and then groped with sensitive fingers for the lock box. Hoping that this door should not prove to be bolted on the other side, she took out her key and worked at the lock. But it took almost an hour before the door finally creaked open on its rusty hinges. Polly slid quietly out into a passage. She turned left and came to another locked door. This was a door she recognized, the door to the chapel. She felt her way back along the passage in the hope of finding an easier way down, but there was no other way out. Polly returned to the chapel door.
She soon discovered that the chapel door had no lock but was barred on the other side.
Hope deserted Polly and she fell to her knees in front of the chapel door, leaning her head against the scarred wood. Then, as she knelt there, she remembered the iron bar she had broken from the chimney. One broken end had been thin and sharp. With a muffled groan, Polly got to her feet and made her way back into the Red Room and down the chimney to her cell. She retrieved the iron bar, and fear and renewed hope lending her strength, she was soon back at the chapel door. She thrust the sharp, broken end of the iron bar in the edge of the door and used it like a crowbar, wrenching with all her strength. There was an almighty crack as the nails holding the bolt plate sprang from their moorings.
Polly was now in the chapel, the chapel which she knew only too well: that macabre, forbidding room divided by high partitions topped by iron spikes into separate pens for the different classes of prisoner. It was on the top floor of the prison; there was another door on its far side leading to the passage which gave access to the roof. To reach it, Polly had to make her way through the pen reserved for prisoners condemned to death. She had been in this pen before and the very smell of it, of the whole chapel around her, was horribly familiar. She was reminded of the horrifying sermons which the prison ordinary preached from the safety of his pulpit. Before, Polly had been determined to try her best to escape, but planning all the while to retreat back to her cell and lock herself back into her fetters should she fail. Now, the very horror of that chapel flooded her with the conviction that she must escape at all costs, and should she fail, a bullet in the back was merciful compared to a hanging at Tyburn. She climbed on top of the coffin, placed there to remind prisoners of the dreadful fate awaiting them, and smashed at the row of spikes on top of the partition with her iron bar to clear a space. The sound was hideously loud in the darkness, but Polly knew the walls were thick and that this was a quiet part of the prison.
She climbed over the gap she had made at the top, jumped down on the far side and hurried to the door at the far end.
When she touched this door in the darkness, her heart fell. The immense iron-plated lock box was clamped to the door with iron hoops, and beneath the lock box an enormous bolt was fastened into its socket by a hasp secured by a strong padlock. The door itself was strengthened by four vast metal fillets.
For a moment she hesitated, wondering what to do, and then she heard the clock bells of St. Sepulchre’s Church chiming the hour. She counted the chimes. Eight o’clock. She had started her escape at three o’clock in the afternoon, after dinner. The fact that she had come so far in five hours gave her a steely courage. She decided that the lock could not be picked and the bolt could not be forced, and so she concentrated on the colossal metal fillet to which they were both attached. Using the iron bar as a lever, maneuvering it into position, Polly Jones looked up into the darkness of the evil chapel and said the soldier’s immemorial prayer: “Dear God—if there is a God—get me out of this!” Then with the strength of a madwoman she wrenched the whole metal plate from the door.
She pulled the massive door open and walked along the corridor toward the roof. The door at the end of the corridor was bolted only on the inside, so she shot back the bolt and walked out onto the roof and into the clean evening air.
She was now on top of the gateway. Surrounding her on every side were high walls shutting off her escape. She left the iron bar at her feet and climbed onto the top of the door she had just opened, and from there leapt to the top of the wall. She jumped down on the far side to the lead roof beneath and, crawling across the tiled roof of the Common Felon’s ward, she came to the parapet of the gateway. Now she could see below her the houses and shops of Newgate Street. The shops were still open and the lights from the houses shone out into the street. She judged that the roofs of the houses alongside the prison were about twenty-five feet below the place where she was kneeling, too far for her to jump down to them. There was only one way to reach them.
Polly knew she would have to go back and collect the blankets from her cell.
Back she went through the shattered door, through the silent chapel, along the stone corridors to the Red Room, and down the chimney. Quickly, she picked up the two thin blankets from the floor which were lying next to her discarded fetters. On her way back through the chapel, she used her file to saw off one of the spikes from the top of the condemned pew. She bundled up her blankets and threw them over the wall and then the iron bar.
Once more she climbed on top the door, leapt to the top of the wall and jumped down the other side.
Leaning her back against the parapet, she began to tear up her thin blankets to make a rope. With the iron bar, she drove the long spike she had taken from the chapel into the wall, tied the end of her blanket rope around it, and climbed down onto the roof of the house below—one of the many which were built right against the prison walls.
She crawled quietly along the slates until she came to an attic window. There was no light inside. She pressed her hand against the window. It was unlocked. She climbed inside and found herself in a garret. She waited, trembling, for half an hour before opening the garret door and starting to make her way slowly down the stairs. She had reached the first landing when her manacles slipped and one of the pieces of chain still attached to them gave a loud clink.
“Lord! What was that?” she heard a woman cry from a room somewhere above.
Then a man’s voice answered, “A dog or cat, no doubt.”
Polly felt she should retreat back to the garret, felt she should wait until all the family were asleep, but panic seized her by the throat, and hitching her stockings securely round her manacles, she ran down the stairs and out into Newgate Street.
&nb
sp; She wanted to keep on running, but knew she would attract attention that way. So she walked unhurriedly past St. Sepulchre’s watch house and then by way of Snow Hill, the Fleet Bridge and Holborn Hill. Then she headed for the open country beyond Gray’s Inn Lane. On the outskirts of the village of Tottenham she found a cowshed, and stretching herself out on the earth floor, Polly fell fast asleep.
She awoke at dawn, crying out at the pain in her ankles, for they were still encircled in heavy iron collars and were cut and bruised and swollen.
It began to rain, heavy, chill, sodden rain. Polly lay in a daze of hunger and pain and looked out through the cowshed door at the rain-pocked puddles forming in the fields.
She was drifting off to sleep again when the owner of the cowshed walked into it. Polly had rolled down her stockings and put them back under the manacles to ease her bruised skin and so they were in full view.
“Who are you?” cried the man.
“Do not harm me,” said Polly, speaking in as deep a voice as she could manage. “I am a poor young man who was clapped up in Bridewell over a bastard child. I have just escaped.”
