Now, here Jack sat, in his first ever Anglican service, and what did he observe but that the floor of the chapel-which was situated on the uppermost storey of Newgate Prison-was indeed divided into boxes. These were pens, and then some. Pens were open to the sky; but these pews (as they were styled by the management) had stout lids on them, to prevent Malefactors from vaulting over the top, or Dissident holy men from ascending directly into Heaven without the intermediation of a deputized representative of the Church of England.
The Phanatiques said that in Anglican churches, Persons of Quality got the best seats; the classes could not mingle freely, as they did in a Gathered church. Sure enough, the pews of Newgate chapel were strictly segregated according to degree. Prisoners from the Common Side were penned on one side of the aisle, to the left hand of the Ordinary as he stood in his corner pulpit. Those from the Master Side went to the right. Debtors were boxed separately from Felons, Males walled off from Females. But the very best seats in the house, directly below the pulpit, were reserved for the aristocracy: persons lately condemned to die at Tyburn. These were granted the luxury of an open pew, though they were chained to it, like galley-slaves to their bench.
The Phanatiques said that the Anglican Church was a place of death, a portal to Hell. Which sounded like lunacy; but this place was hung in black, swathed in funeral-shrouds. Directly before the Condemned pew, between it and the pulpit, was a stout altar; but what rested upon the Lord’s Table was not a breakfast of bread and wine, but a coffin. And lest they fail to apprehend the message, the lid of that coffin had been removed, to make it plain that it was vacant, and wanted a lodger. It yawned at them through the service, and the Ordinary wasted no chance to direct their attention thither.
The Phanatiques said that people went to Anglican churches, not to hear and heed the Word of God, but to see and be seen. That it was a Show, nothing better than a play in a theatre, and probably worse, in that plays made no bones about being vile and bawdy, while Anglican services arrogated to themselves a sort of holiness. It was a claim difficult to make about the front of this chapel, which was full of smelly persons in boxes, peering out through grates. But when Jack tired of staring at the open coffin on the altar, and let his attention wander up the aisle, he noted that the back half of the church was supplied with several rows of open pews, and that they were packed full of churchgoers. Not “parishioners,” mind you, for that would mean people who lived in or near Newgate, but “churchgoers,” meaning, in this case, free Londoners who had got out of bed this morning, put on their Sunday best, and made a positive decision to travel here-a place so miasmic, that passersby had been known to drop dead in the street from breathing what wafted out of its gratings-and sit in a place draped all in black and listen to a gaol-house preacher rant about Death for a couple of hours.
Never one to affect false modesty, or any sort of modesty at all for that matter, Jack knew perfectly well that they had come to stare at the Condemned, and particularly at him. He stared right back. The Ordinary had been explicating a paltry few lines from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans for more than an hour. No one was paying attention. Jack screwed himself around, looked back, and met the eye of each churchgoer in turn, challenging him or her to a stare-down, and he won every one, knocking them down one pew at a time like archery targets pinned to a fencerail. Except, that is, for one whose gaze he could not meet, because her face was hidden behind a veil. It was the same woman who had gone to the Gate of Janus the other day, just to get a look at him. On that occasion, she had flashed by so quickly that he hadn’t fixed her clearly in his memory. This Sunday morning, he had a good hour to stare at her. Her face might be hidden, but he could see plainly enough she was rich; there was a lacy fontange perched atop her head, adding six inches to her height, and serving as a sort of mainmast from which the veil was deployed. Her dress was far from gaudy, being almost as dark and dour as mourning weeds, but he could see the sheen on the silk from here; the fabric alone probably cost as much as the whole contents of an average Londoner’s wardrobe. And she’d brought a bloke, a young man, bit of a bruiser, blond and blue-eyed. Not a husband and not a beau, but a bodyguard. Jack lost the stare-down with him, but only because he, Jack, was distracted. Something was afoot.
Halfway Along Cheapside
DAWN, MONDAY, 25 OCTOBER 1714
“DID ROGER COME TO YOU in a dream, or something?”
“I beg your pardon!?”
Saturn opened his eyes for the first time since he had upended his body into the carriage, back at Clerkenwell Court, a quarter of an hour ago. Since then he had only made himself more comfy with every bump and swerve. Confronted now with evidence that his companion had been conscious, and cogitating, the entire time, Daniel was mildly indignant.
Saturn pushed himself up a notch. “It is so unlike you to know of something before it happens. I wondered if you had had a spectral Visitation from the Shade of the late Marquis of Ravenscar.”
“My intelligence came from another source.”
“The Earl of Lostwithiel?”
“Shut up!”
“I thought so. Mortification was writ all over his lordship’s face the other day, at the Sack of Clerkenwell.”
“It’ll be worse if word gets round that he has been talking to me, and so please curtail this!”
“Hmph. I do not think that Ravenscar got people to be discreet by shushing them. I think rather he was an ingenieur of a sort, who balanced interests.”
“What is your point, other than that I am no substitute for Roger?”
“Clerkenwell Court was to me what a Gathered Church was to your dad’s lot. Now what you Gathered has been Scattered by the Powers that Be. Just as certain of your co-religionists, in such a pickle, would abscond to Massachusetts to erect a City on a Hill or something, I phant’sy that I shall get out of this bloody town and go to what, for a Mechanick, will be what Plymouth Rock was for Puritans.”
“And where, pray tell, is that?”
“Another place called Plymouth, but older, and easier to get to.”
The carriage, following Daniel’s instructions, had managed a right turn; Daniel had lost track of where they were, and was disoriented for a moment, until he saw the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook go by to their left. A light or two was already burning in a window there; good.
Saturn seemed a little provoked that Daniel had not risen to this most excellent bait. “Plymouth is where Mr. Newcomen is building his Engine, is it not?”
“Close enough,” Daniel said. “I shall buy you a map of the west country as a going-away present, and on the journey you can master the fine distinctions between Plymouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, et cetera.”
“ ’Sblood, the place has as many Mouths as Parliament,” Saturn muttered, and watched Daniel carefully-warily, even. Perhaps he had been worried as to how Daniel would react.
Daniel said, “I shall give Mr. Newcomen an excellent character of you.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll not say a word about Infernal Devices, or bursting out of whores’ toilets in the dead of night.”
“I would be indebted.”
“Please don’t think of it in that light…look on it rather as a selfish deed on my part,” Daniel said. “Newcomen needs fewer smiths, and more men like you.”
“I heard he was banging out great bloody monstrosities.”
“That he is. But where he wants help is in the fabricating of the small clever bits-the valves, and so on. Just the job for a Horologist Gone Bad.”
“Right! Let’s sort this, then!” said a radically more energetic Peter Hoxton, rolling out the carriage door even though it had not yet come to a full stop. Daniel smelled River, and felt it condensing on his brow; they’d pulled round on the Three Cranes, a wharf not far from where the lost river of Walbrook buried itself in the Thames. A row of warehouses fronted on it, running parallel to the riverbank and a stone’s throw back from the water. Separating two of these buildings was a narrow chink that anyone might have overlooked in the dark and the fog. Daniel was only able to pick it out because a light was burning some distance along this alley-way, on its right side. As Saturn shambled toward this, his head or shoulders would occult it from time to time. After a minute this stopped happening. Daniel heard a door opening, and eroded stumps of a few words, and then the door closing again.