Once more Ned tried to dredge the darker patches of his memory for the night’s proceedings. What had gone wrong and why was he shackled in a cell? He searched hard, straining to grasp the gimlet of fleeting thought, but no, it was just a jumble of blurred images. One face occasionally stood out-a large smiling lad with a deep laugh, but that was all. Grunting in pain Ned shifted on the damp pile of what he hoped was straw. Maybe the dawn would bring better tidings.
It didn’t. All the light brought was a clearer view of his cell. The walls were covered in multi coloured slime, obscuring some of the scratched marks and incised lettering of despair. A crack in the mortar half way down the wall trickled water into the muddy waste covering the floor. Despite its battering, his nose still worked fine. Ned was quite inordinately proud of his nose. He felt its long, fine appearance gave him a distinguished demeanour. This magnificent proboscis told him clearly that the mud at his feet had passed through many a poor soul before being deposited here.
It would have been close to midday before anyone appeared. He’d heard all the bells of the morning mass chime. The distinctive peel of St Mary Overie sounded close. At a guess that placed him still in Southwark. As the last ring tolled into the cell and faded, he heard an approaching wheeze and the welcome rattle of keys. After an impatient wait that seemed to last an eternity, a single eye peered over the bottom ledge of the door grill. The singular orb was attached to a small man who hopped up and down, straining to reach the lofty height of almost four and a half feet. For a few minutes it provided a welcome distraction, but after that, when nothing further happened he called out. “How about some food and a firkin of ale?”
Ned knew the ritual well- you paid for food and lodgings, or were ignored by the gaolers, or worse still, were fed the slops and leavings they gave to men too destitute to care. Damn, no coin-some thieving foister would pay for that insult when he finally remembered. Ned considered leaving his belt and shirt as surety until he got a message back to his lodgings. Surveying his slim resources, Ned felt that boots were a necessity. The rain had not been heavy enough to wash the accumulated filth from the streets into the river, and that was one indignity he preferred not to suffer. Presumably the charge would be brawling so a small bribe and a fee spread around, and he should be out by this evening, much lighter in silver. Though, how to magic coin out of an empty purse required more ingenuity than he was currently capable.
The short gaoler didn’t answer, but the sound of a retreating cough gave him some hope that the man wasn’t afflicted with deafness as well as being a dwarf. With a frustrated sigh, he cautiously lent back and waited. By inclination he was not patient. So he’d give an hour past the midday bells, then raise as much ruckus as his aching ribs would allow.
It was closer to the None bells, a few hours before sunset-he had counted them all. The whole day had past and nothing-the stumpy jailor had not returned. He would have cursed roundly, damning them all to the devil and hell and beyond, except that his mouth now felt like the floor looked, though a good deal drier. Ned had considered sucking moisture off the spongy green growth above the bars, but he was not near parched enough to succumb to that dubious temptation. So he was left to compose himself as patiently as possible, and that was proving a sore trial.
Anger sat hard with him, but reciting some prayers helped. Well maybe for the first hour or two after Vespers. Now in the deep night of the cell, even that was beginning to wear thin. Ned could hear the evening sounds of the city, distant and muffled by the thick walls. Still it drew him and helped fuel a low, sullen rage. As almost a gentleman, he deserved better treatment than this! Surely his companions, Geoffrey Sutton or Will Coverdale, should have noticed his absence by now. Ned did at least recall that they accompanied him the other day, so why hadn’t he been released or bailed? They’d helped each other before in similar scrapes. Shivering in the evening damp, Ned curled up on the straw as far from the muddy tide as possible, and slowly drifted into a fitful sleep.
The dreams were cold and shivery with the chill damp. Ned twitched violently in the morass of sleep and came to in a sudden jolt, gasping and sweating. Oh good Lord save him! It seemed like a phantasm or nightmare, though the images had the sharp clarity of memory. They were flashes of a fight, a wine dark fountain that splattered the wall after he had withdrawn the blade, the forlorn wail of a man scrabbling in the mud while the fellow’s life blood tricked from the wound. Ned recalled the long blade clenched in his hand and turning to face another, then pain and darkness. How such an event came to be, he had no idea. The golden memory of his angels was dimmed by the sudden visitation of the grim reaper. Life, or rather death, could be like that in London, walking down the wrong street or a disputed gambling debt, or a robbery. Ned pulled his legs up and clasped his knees to stop the trembling. Somehow the Southwark Common Watch had stumbled on whatever had happened, and as a consequence, he was here in this miserable hole.
In a spasm of anger Ned struck the wall with his shackles. Damn, it would be an inquest and then a trial! He didn’t have near enough to bribe the judge or any jury. Perhaps he could always claim benefice of clergy and escape hanging. Reluctantly he pushed that solution aside. Being branded made any future career fraught with difficulties. Ned considered whether his uncle would stand good lord for him. Well it could sway either way, depending on the old sneerer’s calculations of advantage. His shoulder daemon muttered it was a desperate chance and not a risk to stake his life on.
Ned carefully rubbed his face with his manacled hands. Escape may be possible-it all depended on whether the Watch had dumped him in the Clink or the Compter. If it was the first, Old Josiah, the warder, was known to favour the not so discrete present for the quiet release of prisoners before their arraignment to the local justice. But if it was the second then the problems were only starting. Henry Kemp, its warden, had a sinister reputation-relatives of any gaoled man knew that unless the good warder was suitably rewarded, their loved one would suffer. It was common talk that he’d kept one poor soul half-alive, surviving on wormed bread and biscuit for three years, till the family was bled dry. Even worse was that since Kemp reported to the Surrey Justices, the usual officials in London across the river, possibly amenable to his family influence, were as much use as petitioning the Pope.
It was a quandary. He was not in the common gaol with the rest of the gutter sweepings, so that may be promising. However a separate cell also meant something else a bit darker than normal prison. They didn’t give you your own cell just for murdering a soul in the Liberties of Southwark. According to rumour at the Inns of Court, this treatment presaged the death of someone of standing who’d be missed and if they had connections with the church…? It was a church court before the Bishop of Winchester, a man of ill temper and completely lacking the milk of human kindness.
Grimly Ned considered his options. It didn’t take long, maybe a few minutes. He wished it was an hour, but that would be delusion. The possibilities were painfully short-maintain his innocence till they hanged him, keep his silence till they pressed him with weights and he died, or confess, and hope that claiming the rights of the learned would protect his life. No matter which way Ned looked at it, a rosy future was unlikely.
In the midst of these black thoughts Ned heard the slow shuffle and cough of the dwarf gaoler finally returning. Since it was still the long dark hours before dawn, such a visit gave hope. Most releases were in the second or third hour after sun up, just to be sure they had the right prisoner, as well as to judge the quality of the payment.