Van Hoek was disgusted. “I’ve a mind to walk down there and put one through White’s skull,” he said.
“Why? It is my duel, not yours,” said Dappa, busy again.
Van Hoek began to rake up such sticks and dry grass as had escaped his first sweep. “As your second, it is my job to have a go at your opponent if he tries to run away. White ran away.”
“It is a gray area,” Dappa averred. “It is expected of a ship-captain in battle that he’ll not flinch when broadsides come at him; on the other hand, if a fizzing shell lands nearby, he is not expected to stand there and watch it burst.”
“Hmmph,” said van Hoek, repeating his performance of barrel-stuffing; and this time, as if to add emphasis, he ripped off his auburn periwig and jammed it down the throat of the gun to tamp down all of the loose vegetation he’d emptied into it. A shell flew past him. This time, White and Woodruff had used less powder yet, and so it had already caromed once off the ground by the time it reached them. It went by knee-high and executed a loop-the-loop off the hillside, landing directly in front of Dappa: a black, smoking sphere with a burning fuze projecting from one side. It was rolling down-hill, but too slowly for their purposes, and so Dappa bolted toward it and kicked out wildly; missed; drew his leg back, and gave it a hard shove. In almost the same motion he spun round and flung himself full-length on the ground. Van Hoek meanwhile had turned his back on the thing and embraced the powder-keg, spreading out his coat around him to make it a curtain against sparks. The shell rolled and toddled down-hill for one, two, three heartbeats and then blew up.
It was answered a moment later by a second boom, for it seemed that a spark had flown close enough to their Haubitz to ignite the powder in the touch-hole, and fired the weapon prematurely. Dappa and van Hoek were both several moments getting to their feet, as each had suffered survivable wounds from shell-fragments or pebbles, and both were a bit stunned. They saw their shell explode over the Thames.
The blast of White’s shell had knocked their Haubitz askew. A trail of smouldering sticks and grass was, however, spread down the hillside like a road of fire, and Woodruff could be seen kicking furiously at something that emitted dense smoke, and kept adhering to his foot in a way that made him very cross: the wig. White meanwhile was making preparations to re-load.
It was then that they ceased to exist. Dappa’s and van Hoek’s view of the Bulwark was eliminated, replaced by a sphere of flame with ugly dark bits spiraling out of it. Once again they threw themselves to the ground. Burning debris began to shower their position. They jumped up and ran, putting distance between themselves and their stock-piles of explodables. They made rendezvous at the scaffold, which was gaily decorated by the prostrate forms of several Beefeaters who had all sought cover there. About then a ripping BABABA sounded from below as all of White’s shells detonated. This was the signal for Dappa and van Hoek to depart at a sprightly pace for the waterfront. If any of the Yeomen of the Guard lifted his head to watch, he saw them simply disappear into a storm-front of powder-smoke that now obnubilated the lower reaches of the Hill.
Within that immense pall, however, it was possible to see for short distances. And so Dappa and van Hoek paused, or at least slowed down, as they passed by the erstwhile position of White and Woodruff. They did not see anything identifiable as a body; though Dappa was fairly certain he had tripped over someone’s spine.
“Here’s a marvel,” van Hoek said reflectively. He was staring at something down on the scorched earth, using his hook in lieu of an index finger to count several small objects, over and over again. “One, two, three, four, five! One, two, three, four, five!”
“What is it?”
“There are too many ears!” van Hoek exclaimed.
Dappa went over and touched heads with him. There were, indeed, five ears: four all together, all wizened, and, off to one side, a fifth, which looked fresh, as it had blood on it.
“This is explainable, actually,” said Dappa, kicking some dirt over the four dry ones, “but not now. Let’s back to my ship, if you please. The Yeomen, the Watch, the Dragoons: they’ll be all over us!”
“They’ll all be scared shitless.”
“The point is granted; but I really am eager to see my ship again.”
Dappa and van Hoek still could not see far, but they both stumbled down-hilclass="underline" an infallible trick for locating oceans. “I hope this means you have finally put an end to this writing foolishness. It has grown most tiresome.”
“I have discharged my cannonball. I shan’t be quick to re-load. As a writer, however, I am ever a devoted slave to the Muse, whose privilege it is to command me…”
“Then let’s do get to the ship,” said van Hoek, quickening his pace, “and prepare to sail out on to the high seas where the bitch won’t be able to reach you with any such directions.”
The Press-Yard and Castle, Newgate Prison
23 OCTOBER 1714
STRANGE WHAT A DIFFERENCE was made by moving twenty feet. For that was the distance separating Jack’s four-posted feather-bed in the Castle from the middle of the Press-Room, which happened to be situated just on the other side of the apartment’s back wall. A few days earlier, he’d lain naked on a stone floor with a box of weights on his chest; now, clad in a clean linen nightshirt, he reclined on goose-down.
A month or two ago, Jack could have bought his way into this apartment without difficulty. But since then most of his assets had been spent. And what hadn’t been spent had been seized, or otherwise put out of his reach, by his febrile Persecutor, Sir Isaac Newton.
There was no fixed rent for the apartments of the Press-Yard and Castle. Rather, the Keeper applied a sliding scale, depending upon the Degree of the personage imprisoned. A Duke-let us say, a rebel Scottish lord-would be expected to pay a premium of five hundred guineas upon admission to the gaol, simply to escape from the Common-Side and Master-Side. Having got over that hurdle he would, each week, then have to pay the gaoler about a mark, or thirteen shillings and change, for the privilege of staying in a room such as this one.
Now Jack was going to be dead in a week, and so the rent would not add up to much-not even a pound. But the premium was a different matter. A commoner with means, having no other distinctions to his name, would be charged at a much lower rate than a Duke-say twenty pounds. What, then, would be the rate for a Jack Shaftoe? Some would say he was less than a commoner, and ought to pay fewer than twenty pounds sterling. But others-probably to include the Gaoler of Newgate-would insist he was greater, in his way, than a Duke, and ought to pay a king’s ransom.