by Peter Carey
“Very well,” said the Judge. “Then I will swear you as a witness.”
At this, the woman in the dock began to rock back and forth. There issued from her a high and desolate keening that continued even as she was taken from her place and sat in the front row with a policeman each side of her. Then the young man, still trembling but straight-backed, did formally reveal his name and place of lodging, swearing upon the Bible that he would tell the truth. Then he grasped the top rail of the dock and looked down at the court. He looked pale, stunned by what he had done; his belligerence had faded.
“You entered these premises in Frith Street, Mr Maggs?”
“I did.”
“You saw the silver taken from the chest?”
“I did.”
“Who took that silver?”
“I did.”
“Did anyone assist you?”
“Only so far as the door was broken. This was done, as I said, by Tom England, a carpenter of Pottery Lane in Notting Hill.”
The clerk stood to whisper in the Judge’s ear.
“Please explain to the court,” said the Judge, very irritably, “why someone would break a door down and then call the police himself.”
“Damn him,” cried the witness, although whom he meant to damn was not made clear.
“Silence!” roared the Judge.
“Tom’s interest is elsewhere.”
“I fail to understand you. Who is Tom? How does this answer the question I have just asked you?”
“Tom England. His eye is taken.”
“Jack Maggs, you will make yourself clear to the court.”
“He has another Jill who takes his fancy.”
“He has another woman, you mean?”
“He is tired of Sophina. He wishes to be quit of her, but she cannot afford to leave him and so he bent the twig.”
“Bent the twig?”
“Set the trap, Your Honour. He put her in the house, then called the police, Sir. He wants her off his hands.”
“Then you went ahead and stole the silver anyway.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Do you know you can be hanged, Jack Maggs?”
“I do not care.”
“You do not care?”
“It is over in a minute.”
“You have sworn on the Bible, Jack Maggs. Do you not care what might happen to you when you stand before your God? Eternity is not over in a minute.”
The young man seemed as hard as the streets he lived by, but not so hard that this did not give him pause. “Sir, I swear by God, I’m telling the truth.”
“Do you imagine,” said the Judge, “this court is like some street fair that you can work your wickedness and profligacy upon? Do you imagine you can shout and lie before me and line your own pockets when it is obvious to anyone who hears your testimony that you and this young woman were partners in crime on that day? You, Sophina Smith, were unlucky enough to be caught. You, Sir, were impudent enough to imagine you could alter the course of justice. You shall be taken from this place henceforth and charged with the crimes of perjury and burglary.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Then you have confessed before these witnesses that you stole silver from Mr Gunn of Frith Street. But that will be dealt with at another time. Now,” he said, “the prisoner will stand.”
And then, on that foggy Wednesday afternoon whilst children played with hoops, and their nursery maids flirted with soldiers in St James’s Park, the young woman named Sophina Smith was sentenced to death by hanging and he who had tried to save her wept openly in the dock.
75
JACK MAGGS SAT ON THE mid-thwart of the lock-keeper’s punt with the note book on his lap, and from his bent bulk there now emerged a very peculiar series of sounds such as you might have imagined to be made by an injured animal: a hedgehog or a mole.
Jack Maggs was weeping. He bent his body into a hard, tight ball. He grasped his stomach and rocked to and fro. Then came the sound of a squeaky wheel, very close by. The convict stopped weeping immediately. He sat bolt upright, staring with his red eyes into the wet mist. The shadows of some elms were visible, nothing else. Chains clinked together. Jack Maggs reached for the dagger in his boot. He withdrew it with his right hand, while his high hawk’s nose followed the progress of the ghostly vehicle.
The cart (if that is what it was) passed by slowly, but even when it could be heard no more, Maggs showed no intention of sheathing his weapon. Rather he turned its cruel hooked tip toward the author of the note book.
Tobias Oates continued to sleep with his forehead resting on his knees. Jack Maggs waved the knife across him. Then he paused, placing the weapon between his teeth, and kneeled upon the thwart. Without troubling to remove his great-coat, he lowered himself into the Severn.
The river at this point was some three feet deep, and it was therefore a simple enough matter to spin the punt around so that the sleeping author was presented to him back first. Maggs took the dagger in his right hand and he placed his left arm tight around the other’s chest.
“You are a thief,” said he quietly. “A damned little thief.”
Tobias Oates woke up, struggling and splashing his heels amongst the bilge-water, but when he felt the blade up against his throat, he stopped. He lay as still as a fox caught in a snare, his speckled eyes staring straight ahead.
“Don’t kill me, Jack.”
“Shut your hole.”
“You’re cutting me!”
Maggs’s coat floated out around him, like the skirt of some great antipodean squid. “You’ll know when I’m bloody well cutting you.” He turned the boat in the water so the frightened passenger was facing him.
“Why should I not kill you now?”
Tobias Oates glanced quickly towards the bank. If he’d had thoughts of running, he abandoned them for now. He remained huddled up on the aft-thwart, waiting for what would happen next.
“You stole my Sophina, you bastard.”
Tobias felt in his jacket, but his note book was gone. “No, no. She cannot be stolen . . .”
“It were a very low scheming thieving thing you did, Toby.”
“You read my note book, Jack? You read my chapter, is that it?”
“Oh, you wrote a chapter did you? With my name in it?”
“It is a memorial I am making. Your Sophina will live for ever.”
“Don’t say her name.”
“I write that name, Jack, like a stone mason makes the name upon a headstone, so her memory may live for ever. In all the Empire, Jack, you could not have employed a better carver.”
Jack Maggs did not answer, but some lessening of agitation on his part encouraged the writer to continue. “Your painful life . . .”
“You are planning to kill me, I know that. Is that what you mean by painful? To burn me alive?”
“Not you, Jack, a character who bears your name. I will change the name sooner or later.”
“You are just a character to me too, Toby.”
“Very funny, Jack.”
“Funny? I have no reason not to kill you also, Toby.”
“Except that I am flesh and blood.”
“Did you ever see a man lashed, Toby? Did you ever see the parts of his back splashed across the soldier’s uniform?”
“You would not be wise to kill me, Jack. Not now.”
“But I am not a wise man, Toby. I am a vermin who made ten thousand pounds from mucky clay. I have a grand house in Sydney town. There is a street named for me, or was when I sailed. I keep a coach, and two footmen. I am Mr Jack Maggs Esquire, and I left all that so I might end up here today. You have cheated me, Toby, as bad as I was ever cheated.”
And here he began, very slowly, to turn the boat around, with the intention, it seemed, of bringing the young man’s neck once more within his reach. Tobias waited, staring all the while into Jack Maggs’s unstable eyes.
“Spare me,” he cried at last.
“Why would I sp
are you?” asked the other.
“Forgive me, Jack, but I know where your son is. I knew when I left London.”
There was a long silence. Then Maggs spoke. “Oh, you are a very brave little chap, Toby.”
“I am a wretched creature, Jack.”
“Why in God’s name did you bring me here?”
“The money.”
“Are you not a clever man? Is not that the dart with you? Did it not enter that big brain box of yours that I would have paid you twice the price for you to take me to my son in London? Where is he?”
“I will arrange to take you to him.”
“He has been in London all this while?”
“It does seem so, yes. I had a communication from your fellow footman. He has been so tormented by this secret, he knew not what to do.”
“Why tormented? Why did he not tell me?”
“It was on the eve of our departure. It was only because of my desperation I hid it from you.”
“What in God’s name do you have to be desperate of? What would make you act so cruel as this?”
“I told you of my situation.”
“Your wife’s sister? Are you serious? Here you are writing the story of the death of Maggs, and you do not know how to take care of her condition? Take me to my boy, and I will give the pills to you.”
“And my fifty pounds.”
“To hell with your fifty pounds. I will give you what you need, which is more than you deserve. We’ll stop off and get the medicine on our way into London. But let me tell you, if you do not find my boy, that is the end of you. Can you make a bargain like that? You are wagering me your very life.”
“I can.”
“Very well. Hand me your note book.”
“You have it, I believe.”
“It is on the thwart, beside you.”
Toby picked up the book.
“Give it to me.”
It was given.
“I forbid you now to write Sophina’s name, now or ever. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have your magnets with you?”
“No.”
“You will not use your magnets. You will not write my name in your book. You will not write the Phantom’s name.”
“Yes.”
Jack then hurled the book high out above the Severn. As it flew up into the mist, its pages opened like a pair of wings. At this moment a horn was blown very loud and there was a great thundering of hooves and wheels.
Tobias looked towards Jack Maggs, his face white with fright. “Coach,” said Maggs.
“Coach?”
“Stay!”
But Tobias had already jumped. He plunged down to his waist in water. Then, before Maggs had even let go of the punt, he was scrambling helter-skelter up onto the bank towards the road, wet sand clinging to his trouser legs.
76
IF TOBIAS HAD NOT JUMPED into a rocky hole, his leg would not have twisted, and if his leg had not been twisted he might conceivably have made it to Newnham village before the convict caught him.
But his leg was injured, and thus he was easily felled, pinned down with his face pressed amongst the bluebells. And there he lay: winded, bruised, crushed beneath the convict’s weight, as a wagon-load of hay rolled down the road, passing not six feet from where they lay.
Two young men in bright red smocks walked beside the load. One carried a long stave or quarter-staff across his shoulders. The other was unarmed, but he walked with such an easy yeoman gait that Toby never doubted he would fight in the defence of an honest stranger. Still, Jack Maggs’s dagger kept him quiet and, like the hero of Michael Adams, he watched his liberators pass him by while all the time berating himself for his own cowardice: He was crippled by that vision of the cut throat, the horrid mortal gurgling of the windpipe, the knowledge that his very Life could be drained as easily as from the bung hole of a keg.
When the wagon had passed, Maggs squatted beside him, the black blade ready in his hand.
“Turn turtle,” said the convict grimly.
Toby rolled onto his back and watched from the corner of his apprehensive eye as his captor cut a length of cord from his kit-bag.
“What are you doing, Jack?”
“Hands on your head.”
“All I wished was to hail the coach.”
Maggs brought the blade up to his bare neck, and Toby pressed his head hard back into the bluebells.
“Put your blasted hands on your head.”
Toby did as he was bid.
But when he felt the other’s fingers at his trouser belt, he brought his hands down to protect his privates.
“Please, Jack . . . No.”
For answer he received a sharp sting on his thumb. He cried out with pain. Tears flooded his eyes. He felt the Australian undo his waist button.
Then the horrid hands were on the buttons of his flies. Numb with horror, he stared through his tears at the sky, the over-hanging trees. He felt the murder weapon slicing at his trousers.
“Now, put your hands into your pockets.”
Toby imagined the cruellest consequences, but when he spoke his voice was level.
“You want your son,” he said. “You would be wise to recognize that I am your only chance.”
“Put your hands in your pockets, Toby.”
This Tobias did, very slowly. He found the bottoms of his pockets cut away.
“Don’t you move,” said Maggs, dragging the right hand through the pocket and trussing it rapidly with cord. A moment later he had trussed the left.
“Don’t pull on them,” Maggs said.
Tobias did pull on them, and found his wrists to be manacled.
“Don’t pull on them, if you don’t want to get green rot.”
And then, with the blade once again gripped between his teeth, he did up the buttons of the writer’s trousers and helped him to his feet.
Toby looked at the brigand’s face and saw that he was grinning around his blade. This obstacle to his mirth he very soon removed and laughed at Toby freely.
“Look at you. You thought I was going to cut off your gooseberries.”
Tobias stood with his trussed hands deep in his pockets and was aware of being a very sad and sorry figure.
“See now,” said Maggs, “you count your change, Toby. Make sure you’ve got your penny and two farthings.” With that he hugged him, wrapping his arm tight around his shoulders and pulling Toby’s face into his breast, thus forcing him to inhale what would always thereafter be the prisoner’s smell—the odour of cold sour sweat.
“Come, Your Lordship,” said Jack Maggs, “you can count your treasure all the way to London.”
The two men then walked through the wildflowers to the road. The big man was still laughing, the smaller man was rather red-faced and grim-looking. He walked with his hands deep into his pockets, hobbling back towards everything he had hoped to escape from.
77
AS HER MANACLED HUSBAND was being helped aboard a coach in Gloucestershire, Mary Oates came down into the drawing room and was unpleasantly surprised to discover Lizzie, who usually liked to lie in bed till breakfast time, sitting at the window like a sea captain’s wife, her placid hands atop her stomach.
“That little boy from Jones’s shop will get himself run over,” said Lizzie.
Mary did not comment. She settled herself in the low chair in which she liked to feed her baby, and in a moment she and little John had reached their usual accommodation.
“He is running his hoop across the street under the very hooves of the horses.”
“Lizzie, are you waiting for Toby to return?”
The light was behind her sister, rendering her face in shadow, but there was no mistaking the false note in her voice. “Oh, is it today he comes, Mary?”
Mary did not deign to answer.
“It is today, Mary?”
This disingenuousness was so repugnant to her that Mary could pretend no longer. “You know as much
as I do, Lizzie.”
“Oh, I think you know much more, Mary. Look at how you have dressed.”
Mary had already noted how her sister was dressed that morning—in her bright blue poplin, with her best lace shawl around her shoulders.
“I think that you have had word from him,” Lizzie continued heedlessly. “Because you are wearing your velvet.”
The notion that she should have to wear her best dress to win her husband’s good opinion was so insulting to Mary that it was a moment before she could answer calmly.
“Perhaps you have heard from my husband, Lizzie.”
“Oh Mary, you say the queerest things.”
“Not near as queer as you,” said Mary darkly.
She laid a white napkin on her lap and then laid the infant on it and gently paddled his back before setting him on the other breast.
“Mary, are you angry with me?”
“No, dear.”
“What queer things were you referring to? Have I been babbling again? I know I do babble. I think perhaps I really should give up my novels. They give me very peculiar dreams.”
“I was referring to no particular thing,” said Mary, but those extraordinary conversations about adoption still burned bright in her memory. Had Lizzie not come back to this theme so repeatedly, Mary might never have noticed the way her sister sat with her hands resting complacently on her belly, or the way her bosom lately pressed against the bodice of her gown. These two symptoms had gnawed at her daily while every aspect of her sister’s behaviour gave further indication of the true nature of her disease.
It was as if someone had died, but there was no death, just a horrible agitation she could reveal to no one. If she felt rage, it showed only on the itchy rash across her back. If she had tears, they were contained within the water blisters which had risen in the middle of these red weals.
She was a blunt woman, in many ways, but what she now knew, she would not name. What she was about to do, she would not look at.
She had carried the little newspaper advertisement for nearly a week, but even as she cut it out with her sewing scissors she did not admit to herself where it might lead her. This morning she had put on her best dress so that whoever she must now encounter would know she was, in spite of the circumstances, a respectable woman. She finished feeding little John, and buttoned her bodice. She carried her child towards the door.
