Deep in her pocket, her hand gripped the large stone that she had picked up from beside the river. Dorothea had grabbed it as a means of defence, but it could also be used in attack. She felt the rough contours with her fingers. They would never anticipate an assault from her. If she could somehow get close enough to Joseph Beechroft — or, better still, to Ralph Olgrave — she could dash out his brains with her weapon. Finding a place in the shadows, she sat down to watch and wait.
Dorothea was still keeping Bridewell under surveillance when two officers dragged a beggar into view. The man was lame and had his arm in a sling but that earned him no sympathy. The officers pulled him to the gatehouse then pushed him to the ground. Knowing what lay ahead for the beggar, Dorothea wanted to reach out and comfort him. One more anonymous victim was about to suffer an ordeal.
Nicholas Bracewell cowered before the gatekeeper’s searching gaze. One of the officers hauled him to his feet while the other handed over a writ.
‘What’s his name?’ asked the gatekeeper.
‘Tom Rooke,’ replied Frank Quilter, ‘but it might as well be Tom o’Bedlam for he talks nothing but nonsense. He’s been whipped at the cart’s-arse so we’ve no more use for him. Lock him up and throw away the key.’
‘We’ll want work out of him,’ said the gatekeeper. ‘One arm may be useless but we’ll find labour for the other. Leave him to me, friends. I’ll take care of Tom Rooke.’
Quilter and Ingram nodded a farewell and set off again. After checking the writ that committed the prisoner to Bridewell, the gatekeeper wrote details of the newcomer in his ledger. He then summoned another man, who promptly punched the beggar to make him move. Nicholas scrambled forward through the main gate.
‘What’s your name?’ said the keeper.
‘Tom Rooke, sir,’ croaked Nicholas.
‘You’ll be plain Tom in here. Remember that.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’
‘I cut it badly, sir.’
‘Every beggar pretends to have a bad arm or leg or foot,’ sneered the keeper, tugging the limb free of the sling and producing a yelp of pain. ‘It’s an old trick to get out of doing heavy work.’
He examined the arm. Nicholas had bound it with filthy strips of linen that had been soaked in pig’s blood beforehand. His fair beard was grimed and he had rubbed dirt all over his face. Leonard had given him some sour milk from the kitchen at the Queen’s Head and he had poured it all over his ragged clothes. The keeper reacted to the stench.
‘You stink of foul vomit,’ he complained. ‘We ought to toss you into the Thames to clean you off, you leprous scab! Put that arm back in the sling and follow me.’
Nicholas did as he was told and went across the first courtyard, taking careful note of its design and dimensions and seeing that Dorothea Tate’s description of the place had not erred too much. When they went through into the next courtyard, he saw young boys helping to unload boxes of food from a cart. The keeper turned on him.
‘That’s not for the likes of you,’ he said, ‘so you can look away.’
They went through a door and climbed a winding staircase. Nicholas was led along a passageway to a large oaken door that the keeper had to unlock. Both of them entered a long, narrow room with a number of soiled mattresses along one wall. There was little in the way of furniture beyond a small table and a single stool. The keeper pointed to the mattresses.
‘You’ll sleep in here,’ he told Nicholas. ‘Choose someone else’s mattress and they’ll soon let you know it with their fists. Tomorrow, we’ll put you to work.’
‘How many of us are in here?’
‘Enough.’
‘Will I be fed today?’
‘No,’ said the man, gruffly. ‘Only those who work can eat in Bridewell.’
The keeper went out and locked the door behind him. Nicholas was able to straighten up and lift his eye patch so that he could inspect the room in more detail. It was not difficult to identify the mattresses that were in use. Meagre belongings lay beside each of them. Since the mattress at the far end of the line was the dirtiest and most shredded, he knew that it would be his. Light flooded in. The three windows all overlooked the courtyard where the boys were still unloading produce from the cart.
According to the sketch that was drawn from Dorothea’s memory, Nicholas was in the same room where Hywel Rees had been kept. It was from one of the windows that he must have seen the girl being taken reluctantly to the feast in the hall. If that was the case, Nicholas wondered how the Welshman had been able to get out in order to go to the girl’s rescue. The window was too high from the ground for him to drop down with any safety, and the door far too solid to force.
Nicholas remained at a window to watch. There was no sign of either Joseph Beechcroft or Ralph Olgrave, but a number of other people came into view. Some were obviously inmates, forced to do whatever chores were necessary, and there were several keepers on duty as well. But he also noticed a few men who came and went from doors on the opposite side of the courtyard. They moved around with complete freedom and, judging from their attire, they could hardly be described as paupers. Nicholas asked himself what function they had in Bridewell.
When the cart had been unloaded, one of the boys was clipped around the head by the keeper and sent through an archway to do another task. The keeper then took the second boy towards the door through which Nicholas had come. Leaving the window, Nicholas went to the last mattress and dragged it away from the others, then he put his arm back in the sling and arranged the patch over his eye. He crouched on his mattress and waited. After a while, the door was unlocked and a weary young boy came in, only to have the door locked immediately behind him. Seeing Nicholas, the boy stopped.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, warily.
‘My name is Tom Rooke,’ said Nicholas, in the cracked voice he had practised earlier. ‘I’m convicted of vagrancy and sent here. What do I call you, lad?’
‘Ned. Ned Griddle.’ He approached slowly. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’
‘I was stabbed in a brawl, and lost a lot of blood.’
‘They’ll want you to work in here.’
Nicholas held up a hand. ‘Stay back, Ned. I do not smell too sweet.’
‘Have you been in Bridewell before?’
‘Never,’ said Nicholas, adjusting his sling, ‘but I had a friend who was sent here recently. I hope to see him again.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A young Welshman by the name of Hywel Rees. Do you know him?’
‘I did,’ said the boy, sadly. ‘I liked him. Hywel was discharged.’
‘So soon? Why was that, Ned?’
‘They said he caused too much trouble. There was a girl he knew, she was in here as well, but they would not let him see her. So Hywel escaped.’
‘How?’ asked Nicholas. ‘If he’d jumped from the window, he’d have broken his legs. There’s no way out.’
‘Hywel found one,’ explained Griddle. ‘He climbed on the roof and worked his way along until he came to an open window. He went through it. That room was not locked because I later saw him run across the courtyard to the hall.’
‘Brave man! The girl must have been Dorothea, then.’
‘Did you know her as well, Tom?’
‘A little,’ said Nicholas. ‘They’d not been in London for long.’
The door was unlocked again and four youths came into the room. Thin and dishevelled, they had obviously been working hard because they all dropped down on their individual mattresses. One of them fell asleep at once, the others barely gave the newcomer a glance. Ned Griddle’s mattress was the one next to Nicholas. He squatted down on it and slipped a hand inside his shirt. Making sure that the others did not see him, he passed Nicholas a piece of the bread he had scrounged from the kitchen. Both of them munched in silence for a few minutes.
‘How many of us are there altogether?’ said Nicholas at length.