“I tell you: I didn’t do it. They bore false witness against me — my enemies did.”
“No sir, ye’re a desperado and a true ‘ero of the people. I can tell by the lay of yer ears. No sense in denyin’ a crime of passion — a savage and courageous one at that — by Jesus I wisht I’d a killed me a lord or two when I ‘ad the chance. . Nope. They’ll ‘ang ye as sure as linen gets gray and a gin bottle empty, ‘ang ye high. My advice to ye, young bucko, is to take it like a man and drop yer drawers in their prissy, lavender-scented faces just as they goes to hoist yer up. That’s the ticket.”
“Shut up, you old loon. Shut up or I’ll—”
“Tell me. ‘Ow’d ye do it? Throttle ‘im? Stick ‘im in the ribs? Or’d ye just blarst the inbred degennerit in the back of the ‘ead? ‘Ey?”
Ned doesn’t answer. The full realization of all that’s transpired in the past few hours has begun to seep into his consciousness, depress his stomach and worry the moisture from his throat. There will be no elopement now, no Dutch inn, no Fanny. . there won’t even be another court of sessions for six weeks so he can plead his case. By then he’ll be dead of the stink. With a little money, prison doesn’t have to be all that bad. You can have a private room, a fire, irons as light as drawstrings — and then only at night. You can send out for your meals, a bottle, a big-bosomed whore, have your cronies in to dine and play at cards, hire jugglers and musicians, keep a cat, sniff snuff, drink geneva and sleep between silken sheets. But come to prison penniless and they’ll strip the clothes from your back and mew you up in the dungeon, where day and night meld into one and dinner consists of a stale crust washed down with a cup of standing water that looks and smells like cow’s piss.
“I think I woulda drowned ‘im in a pig trough,” the loon says. “Or maybe just tie the bleeder to a pole and ‘orsewhip ‘im till the bones poke through ‘is haristycratic ‘ide.”
Mendoza. He’s the one. He got Smirke and the young prig to give depositions against him, then talked and bribed, talked and bribed, until the magistrate agreed to march the prisoner across the river and over to Newgate—”Southwark Prison isn’t foul enough for the likes of ‘im,” Mendoza had argued. “Besides, why make ‘is late lordship’s ‘igh-placed friends and relations travel all the way over ‘ere to see the filthy beggar get ‘is deserts?” And so, after Ned’s pockets had been picked and his mouth stopped with a dirty rag, the magistrate had laid half a ton of chains on him and remanded him to Newgate.
“Lords. Bah. Leeches is wot they is. Never done me a bit of good in me ‘ole life — and plenty of ‘arm, I’ll tell ye. Lookit Jock over there—’Ey Jock! Jock! — hee, hee, ‘ee’s been dead three days, and don’t nobody know it yet but me. And you. Know wot Jock was in for?”
Ned shakes his head.
“Nipped tuppence from the waistcoat pocket of one of yer lords out on King’s High Street. Tuppence. Can ye believe that? ‘Ee was a cobbler, Jock was. I knew ‘im well. Three babbies squawlin’ in their craddle all night and day for an empty stomach and so Jock goes and dips ‘is fingers into the precious pocket of some addle-’eaded lord. And wot does ‘ee get for it? Tuppence. And tuppence ain’t no capital offense, as well ye knows, me bucko. But ‘ee paid capital for it, din’ee?”
“Yeah,” says Ned, distant. His ankles have gone to sleep. He tries to shift position, but the shackles won’t budge. “So what did he die of then?”
“Die of? Why ye young ass, don’t ye know?”
“Know? How should I?”
The old loon snorts. “Ye’ll know soon enough, I warrant. Jock died of the cholerer.”
♦ SHOCK AND OUTRAGE ♦
Sir Joseph Banks drops the afternoon paper with a shout and springs to his feet, upsetting a decanter of sherry and a humidor packed with Virginia tobacco. “Dorothea!” he bellows, lunging through the library at the expense of an elephant’s foot umbrella stand, the tea tray and a japanned cabinet half buried in stationery, envelopes and sealing wax.
Fanny, who has been dusting in the hallway, is nearly bowled over as her employer bursts from the library and leaps at the stairs like a wounded stag, bellowing “Dorothea! Dorothea!” as if it were a battlecry. Startled, she turns to gaze after him as he slams up the steps and vanishes round the corner, the sound of his footsteps hammering overhead, another shout, and then the curt rap of his knuckles on Lady B.’s door.
He’d caught her daydreaming, Fanny, staring into space and rubbing away at a bust of Lycurgus as if she were a cog in a machine. She’s been like this all day. Bount attributed it to the excitement of the previous night (“what with the burglar and all”), while Cook took her aside and asked if her monthly flow might be especially troublesome owing to the new moon. To think of their simplicity! Fanny smiles, filled with a delicious sense of anticipation, intoxicated with the thought of the coming night and her elopement with Ned. Holland! She can barely believe it. She’ll buy herself a collar of Dutch lace, and one of those white mobcaps with the little wings and a pair of wooden clogs. They’ll live in a windmill, maybe, or on a barge — hah! She’ll be mistress of her own household, with a servant to bring her tea and cut flowers. . no more kowtowing to Lady B. or wiping up pug’s turds in the foyer.
From upstairs, Lady B.’s voice: “Jos — what is it?”
“It’s Graeme! Graeme Twit. They’ve killed him!”
“Killed him? Whatever are you talking about?”
Sir Joseph’s voice is pinched with emotion. “It’s an outrage, is what it is.
A shock and an outrage. By God—”
Absently, already losing interest in the turmoil upstairs — Twit? Where has she heard that name? — Fanny turns to the open library door and the chaos within. Muttering to herself, she rights the japanned cabinet, and squats to pluck fragments of china from the carpet. The newspaper and humidor lie on the floor too, at the base of Sir Jos’ armchair.
“—no, Dorothea, don’t try to calm me!” Sir Joseph thunders from above. “I don’t want to be calmed.”
Fanny cups the loose tobacco in her hands and restores it to the humidor, then picks up the paper, smooths and folds it, and is about to lay it across the arm of the chair when she is arrested by the headline:
LORD TWIT MURDERED IN SOUTHWARK
She reads on, strangely compelled, stumbling over the words. Suspect in custody, reconstructing a dark night in a poor section of London and the darker motives of the criminal mind, willful, premeditated and unprovoked act of savagery. And then she comes to the two words that stop her heart: Ned Rise. Ned Rise, the assassin.
Upstairs, like a vengeful, triumphant horn sweeping up the scale to conclude an allegro furioso in a burst of power and vituperation, Sir Joseph’s voice rings out: “I’ll see him flayed alive and strung up for the dogs to piss on — by God I swear an oath I will.”
♦ QUID PRO QUO ♦
At this juncture in the history of manners, it was considered de rigueur for a heroine to faint dead away when confronted with so sudden and devastating a turn of events. But Fanny was made of sterner stuff. After a short but cathartic cry, she retired to her closet at the rear of the kitchen — pleading illness — and began racking her brain for a means of helping her lover out of his predicament. It seemed hopeless. She had no more than a pound or two herself (and that hoarded up over a period of months, penny by penny), her parents were ragged paupers, her friends milkmaids and servants — and clearly she couldn’t turn to Sir Joseph. She thought of extorting money from Cook’s household funds or of making off with Lady B.’s plate and silver. . but no, she couldn’t do that. What then? Innocent or not, Ned had to be saved — no matter what it took. All at once it hit her: Adonais Brooks! Of course. She remembered the look on his face when he goosed her in the hallway and threatened to throw himself from the window if she spurned his advances. Sallow, round-shouldered, something sick in his eyes. Go ahead and jump, she’d said. He jumped. Adonais Brooks. Walks with a cane now. She smiled a grim and calculating smile. Adonais Brooks. Horny as a tomcat.