Confessions of the Fox

by Jordy Rosenberg

  “What’s ‘wild’?” Jack sat on the Daybed.

  “My gods, you’ve been squirrel’d away.” She joined him on the Daybed. “Wild’s a craven scoundrel. A businessman of thieving. Runs the largest gang of blackguards in the city. Controls them through what you might call an ‘informal indenture.’ Do you know what fencing is?”

  “Naturally,” he huff’d. “Selling stolen goods.” His mother had once described him as “fencing” the barley seeds he filched off the apothecary carts. She hadn’t been entirely opposed to it either, as he always gave her most of his Coin.

  “Wild was London’s most acclaimed fencer until the magistrates got onto him. Imprisoned him at Wood Street Compter for many years; he survived by turning Trustee*3. While at Wood Street, Wild made the acquaintance of every whip-jack*4, blackguard and elbow-shaker*5 captured off the streets. He knew everyone by name. And he knew exactly who to put one over on at any given occasion. They called him the Thieves’ Oracle. Wild was the one to see if you needed an ounce of gin, a Law-book, or a high bunk to escape the rat-frequented damp of the common Hold.

  “And Wild was also the gent the Keepers solicit’d for Information on who had pinched an ounce of gin, or who had managed to gain extra pence that day begging through the prison bars. He made Cozy with the Keepers. He was their King-snitch for the term of his Confinement. And now snitching and cozy-keeping have become Wild’s very Profession.”

  In the course of these declamations, Bess had leaned into Jack, her shoulder pressing against his. The watch was ticking forward—he could hear it in her hand. But the time Jack was inhabiting had come disjoin’d from the Watch.

  “Once he was discharged from Wood Street, Wild created a new category of urban Blight, christening himself Thief-Catcher General. He runs the heists, and he runs the snitches and he snitches out the heisters, too. He’s intimate with the Magistrate.”

  Bess leaned back against the window casings. The warm Impress where her shoulder had been cool’d in the open air.

  “Wild’s the worst kind of thief. He’s as bad as the stockjobbers at the Royal Exchange. No, worse.” She touched his forearm. “I think you could be a freelance rogue. You’re different.”

  Would being a freelance rogue mean more of this? More touching and talking and—

  “Come to the docks tomorrow, ’round noon. I can introduce you to some other Unowned.”

  Jack flinch’d. “I’m permitted to market generally only on Tuesdays and the occasional Sunday. I can sneak out at night, but during the day—”

  “Do you make all your decisions based on the threat of Punishment?”

  In fact, more or less he did.

  “They don’t enforce the Vagrant Act the way you think they do.”

  “The Act is very clear ’bout what you can and can’t do.” Sadly, Jack had memoriz’d every threatening word of the Act.

  “Has a centinel ever stopped you on your way to market?”

  “No. But I’ve always had a master’s Note.”

  “How do they know you have a master’s Note? You wear it pinned to your sleeve?”

  Jack winced.

  “And how do you walk when you have your note?”

  “Easy.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “Easy.”

  “So”—she shrugg’d—“walk that way without one.”

  “Bess, that’s—”

  “Don’t you know that all the laws are enforced selectively? Now, if you were a lascar marooned in London by the East India Company refusing to pay return passage, then I’d say—”*6

  “Well, of course!”

  She ignored Jack’s frantic display of understanding.

  “As I was saying, if you were a marooned lascar sailor, then your options would be slenderer. And I’m not saying they’re not slender now. But choosing when and how they enforce the law on you is not something you can do. And not a reason to confine yourself before you begin.”

  The catastrophe of being caught without a master’s Note rose up like a clot of Smoke in his mind. “Even if I could, there’s Kneebone and the workday—”

  “Do you want to be Kneebone’s servant all your life?”

  This stung.

  “Of course not.” His words were sticking together in a dry mouth.

  “Well, if you find a way.”

  This was delivered as if there were a Way to find.

  “Could you wait until Tuesday? On my way to market?”

  “Tomorrow’s when we meet up. Regular thing.” And then Bess leaned in. Her hand was on his Chest. On the wrappings. “You’re not breathing,” she said, her breath heating his Neck.

  Time went out of joint again because she press’d her lips to his neck, and said, “Did you want to make that Acquaintance with me now?”

  Jack had never made any woman’s Acquaintance. So he did what he could only imagine a cove would do in such a situation. He put his fingers under Bess’s Chin, raising it gently. He kept his fingers there for the duration of which he leaned down and kiss’d her—three seconds that bloomed and bloomed. His heart had turned ocean, was throwing waves onto a shore.

  “Nice,” Bess said, nodding. “Nice.”

  Then she put her hand around the back of his head and pull’d him down more firmly to her Lips. “Now do it not quite so nice.”

  She open’d her mouth wide and they were kissing again—with their Velvets down each other’s throats and him groaning and holding her fast against him at the small of her back.

  When they surfac’d, he put his head into her neck, breathing deep the scent where her hair met Skin.

  “Or,” she said. “You don’t have to go back to Kneebone at all. I have a place you can stay.”

  She meant her rooms—her rooms with her in them— Oh God.

  How he wanted this—to be plung’d into her world—to stay with her.

  But Jack didn’t know how to do this—to stay. More properly, to stay Seen—to be seen all day and have it continue into the Night—and how—and what next? Show himself to her—as what?

  He must retreat to the aloneness of Kneebone’s—the wretched unseenness to which he’d become accustom’d.

  “I have to go,” he said, already at the window, knowing full well how unsatisfying and yet how unstoppable his release back into anonymity would be.

  * * *

  —

  Then he was thundering over the roofs alone, the wind coursing through his lungs—a specter evaporating back into the City— This, he felt, was all he was and all he would ever be—a Shard of metropolis.*7

  He ran over the roofs to Kneebone’s. Unhinged the windows. Slipp’d into bed, his knickers and thin smish filling with the chill that’d collected under the coverlet. And then he fell into sleep Unseen. As he did every night. Every single night, like a Pebble falling silently to the bottom of a dark Pond. Alone. Alone. Always alone.

  * * *

  —

  Jack woke just before Dawn, the sky streak’d pink and blue over the tiled roofs. Why couldn’t his own Ceiling change color, deepen, shoot through with sun? Why was he the terrified, careful idiot who had to wait until Tuesday? Always calculating Punishments to come. Would the black-capped horizon of his Imagination never prism into color?

  —Oh, how he long’d for her.

  For Bess had given him something he had never known. Some confecktion—still just a Concept yet—the flicker of a life lived in tandem. Something to truly want.

  And this just about undid him.

  * * *

  —

  The hasps at his door rattled— Jack’s heart leapt—he’d forgotten to slip the Polhem Lock back onto his ankle to mask his evening Escape.

  And now the Door was opening.

  * * *

  —

  Jack
could not have guessed that old, rickety Kneebone could move so quickly and with such Force. For his gray eyes had landed on Jack’s ankle, lying outside the coverlet. Lockless.

  Jack tried to sit up, to say something, fashion some excuse— But before he could speak, Kneebone struck him in the temple, slamming his head back against the wall— In the ensuing onslaught, Jack was too stunn’d to resist— Kneebone wheezed with the force of his effort as he knocked Jack’s head again and again at the same spot. Jack heard high-pitched squeals— He was shattered to realize that the squeals were coming from his own throat. He heard himself calling for help— His own voice rang out, unrecognizable.

  * * *

  —

  When it was over, Kneebone walked calmly to the door. “Your labor is the property of Kneebone. Your rest restores you to labor for Kneebone, and thus is your Rest my Property as well.”

  Then he walked through, closed and lock’d the door.

  Jack curled on his side, panting. In the sudden silence of the room, he was possessed of a strange Clarity. A sentence ran through his mind. He had never been given to Vengeance before, but what was there now was there without dispute. You’ll be sorry, he thought, over and over again. You and all your kind will be sorry.

  * * *

  —

  Jack snatch’d his cloak and threw the rose-gold watch fob into his pocket. Slipp’d open the window and leapt out. He raced from Kneebone’s powered by the Terror—the Certainty—that his master was just behind him.

  *1 Old

  *2 Creating pressure in a crowd to pull off a heist

  *3 Errand-runner for the guards; snitch

  *4 Counterfeit Mariners; pretended survivors of shipwrecks. Forgers of calamity.

  *5 Cheater

  *6 Impossible not to wonder what Bess might have said if not interrupted. Would either she or Jack have reflected on themselves as racialized? (Viz., Gerzina, “The English only began to see themselves as ‘white’ when they discovered ‘black’ people,” Black London, p. 5.)

  Yet another constitutive lacuna through which we peer, deriving racialization’s crystallization not in the content, but in the formal features of the text. Perspective. Who interrupts whom. Where the narrative breaks off, etc.—

  *7 Note to self: This particular relation between the queer/trans body and the city is strangely resonant with a contemporary sensibility; i.e., it’s hard not to relate.

  We, the emotionally starved; we, who have been thrown from the void, who have turned to the city when there was nowhere else. Well, maybe not all of us, but I know I have so many times felt the city itself was my mother, and I her asphalt nursling.

  11.

  At the corner of Stoney and Clink, Jack nearly tumbl’d down the side of a butcher shop onto the street. He was faint with Fatigue. The buildings of the city tilt’d in his vision like unmoored docks in a Storm.

  In the fog at the Pool of London, the ships appear’d yet taller than their vast heights, topmasts lost in dense Vapor. It was the muddled purple of very early morning, air thick with Dark. The port was busy. A ground cover of fallen leaves turned to fume in the alchemy of Boots as sellers stormed up ramps to haggle with captains and ships’ bursars. The soundscape was stuffed with cooing woodpigeons and yapping Sparrows; cant in a variety of languages, and the din of Prices shouted back and forth. Riggings creaked and wind-beaten Vessels ached against anchors driven deep into the riverbed.

  There was Bess. Standing with another doxy, heads bent, reading a broadside together. Somewhat intimately.

  He trotted up. He’d done it after all. He’d come.

  The doxy looked up first. Chestnut hair, navy blue eyes unblinking.

  “I’m Jack,” he managed. “Bess’s—” He didn’t know how to describe the rest.

  “I know who you are”—held out her hand—“Jenny Diver.”*1 If he’d had to imagine a friend and colleague of Bess, he would have conjured a temperament similar to hers—studious and haunted—for the world was already becoming Bess-copies to him. But Jenny was something else entirely. There was an entitl’d Wildness about her. She stood at the docks in full doxy regalia—skirts blooming, tight corset, full face paint—and an air of brazen unconcern.

  “Oi, Bess! Jenny!” A cloud of Perfume preceded a slender tall man approaching in a turquoise topcoat, his mustache knitted tightly into an upcurl, accompanied by an equally tall dame togg’d out in a tight-bodiced crimson dress. Her fingers were fawnied*2. The man embraced Bess. “Pa ni mèt ankô,”*3 he said, against her ear. Released her. The dame and Bess kissed cheeks in the French fashion.

  “Jack,” she said, touching his shoulder, by way of introduction. He liked very much how his name sounded in her Mouth. “Meet Franny and Laurent.”

  “Still at Cresswell’s?” said Laurent to Bess.

  Nodding. “And where have you been?” teas’d Bess. “Come by soon.”

  “Friday night games and gin?”

  “Always!” said Jenny.

  “Please.” Bess put her hand on Franny’s arm. “We’ve missed you.”

  “We will! We will!” she said, and the two stroll’d off, arm in arm, leaving the cloud of scents lingering behind.

  “Who’re they?” Jack ask’d.

  “Didn’t Bess tell you not to ask questions?” Jenny laughed at him. “But since you did—those are mollies!”

  Jack flushed. He’d heard Kneebone disparage the mollies as especial “vectors of Contagion.” He hadn’t known they’d be so beautiful.

  “More like friends of the House,” Bess explained.

  “ ’Til later,” said Jenny, leaning in to kiss Bess’s cheek. Bess put her hand to the side of Jenny’s head. Held her there. Jack turn’d away.

  Jenny threaded through the crowd quickly—something like a vicious, gleeful cat shredding twine. Coves jerk’d to the sides to let her pass. It wasn’t how people grumblingly obliged Mrs. Kneebone’s path through the streets. Jenny’s walk shatter’d the density of Bodies around her into air.

  Jack turn’d back to Bess. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d taken her hand—the first time he’d walked hand in hand with a woman, in fact. He choked with Joy. Bess’s hand puls’d, small and warm in his Palm.

  * * *

  —

  Just then he smelled something—the mineral tang of sweat perspiring off metal—and before he knew it, a cold snap at his free wrist—handcuffs—and the words “Charing Cross watch-nabber” snarl’d from behind. A thick hand grabbed his breeches, jammed into his pocket, drew out the watch.

  The false accusation had, in fact, turn’d true.

  “Taking you to Newgate,” gruffed the centinel in a blast of sour Breath.

  Jack found Bess’s gaze with his terrified own. She squeezed his hand— His had turn’d clammy with terror— Hers was warm, dry— Calm, she mouth’d.

  “Back on your ship, lascar,” the centinel directed at her. A crowd was gathering, separating the two of them with a small commotion.

  Jack saw Laurent craning through the crowd at the tumult. Franny slid through the cluster. Then she had her hand on Bess’s shoulder, and Laurent drew up alongside. The two of them, flanking her, led her quietly away.

  The centinel yank’d on the handcuffs, pulling Jack back towards him. Then he was being dragg’d hard towards Clink Street—and tripped, fell, hitting the cobblestones hard on his Knees.

  I was almost Free, he thought, as his Body shook with the impact. Almost.

  *1 In John Gay, “Jenny Diver” is likely based on the eighteenth-century pickpocket Mary Young; in Brecht, this character becomes “Pirate Jenny/Low Dive Jenny.”

  *2 Covered in rings

  *3 Now this is an unusual piece of cant for which I can find no translation whatsoever in any of my dictionaries or any ngram search. I’ll have to consult a colleague and
return to this passage later.

  12.

  If only it was a Polhem Lock that the warden produced when Jack arrived at the high-ceilinged stone entryroom of Newgate. The trim, well-attired warden laid the Lock—a heavy iron English padlock—and Chain lovingly on his desk.

  “Charing Cross Watch-Nabbing,” he intoned, scratching details in his book of Accounts. Jack glanced at the spread pages filled with Names. The handwriting was neat in that erotick way of an author who takes pleasure in the minutiae of a Cruel job. Straight lines ran through near half the Names. Jack did not suppose these lines indicated Release.

  “Name?” The warden’s quill poised over his book.

  Jack’s mouth hesitated over P——. Hesitated next over Jack. He heard himself making a glob of Sound that was neither.

  “We do need a name, a proper name with alphabetic letters and the like.”

  “Jack Sheppard.” His voice sounded small.

  The warden wrote slowly and carefully. Just then a beetle emerged from between the stones in the wall behind the warden. Jack’s eyes followed the creature as it scuttled across the wet gray Wall. He thought of Bess—the way she’d petted and soothed the bug at the Black Lion—how she freed it. The warden traced Jack’s gaze—turned—and slamm’d his palm against the beetle—wiped his hand with a Kerchief, picked up the Lock and Chain and handed them to the centinel.

  He nodded at a door to the rear of the room. “Below the Keeper’s house.”*1

  * * *

  —

  Jack was forc’d through the doorway and down the narrow Stairwell.

  “The Dungeon!” the centinel said with obvious excitement when they reached the bottom of the stairs. He push’d Jack down the hall, past cells full of glum inmates.

  “Debt-skippers, stingers, area sneaks*2, bit-fakers*3, blue pigeon-flyers*4, and Body-snatchers*5,” listed the centinel, proud of the quantity and variety of the Condemned. They reached the end of the hall and turned into a still-narrower, mold-lined stone passageway to a row of near pitch-black cells—these were empty but for grimy pallets.