‘Mr Grace.’ Samuel Fleet leaned over the balcony of the Tap Room, a glass of punch in his hand. ‘What’s the matter?’
Grace frowned up at him. ‘Mr Hawkins is not satisfied with his accommodation.’ As if I’d been complaining of the view.
‘My roommate is dying of smallpox,’ I called up, though I was sure he had heard every word. ‘I am being charged two and six a week to murder myself.’
‘How unfortunate.’ He leaned his chin on his hand, coal-black eyes fixed upon mine. Smiled slowly. ‘There is a bed free in my room. You are welcome to it, sir.’
A shiver of dread ran through me. Lock myself in a room each night with a man who killed his last cell mate? I might as well share a cage with a tiger. ‘I… I thank you sir, but I-’
‘I insist.’
I had never heard such menace in two short words. Fleet had not taken his eyes from mine for a moment. Had not even blinked. I swallowed hard, then bowed my agreement. What else could I do?
Well, Mr Woodburn, you were quite right, I thought bleakly. God does have a plan for me. I am to be murdered in my bed on my very first night.
‘No, no, this will not do,’ Grace tutted.
‘There must be another room,’ I said, seizing my chance. ‘If I might just speak with Mr Acton…’
‘There are procedures. There are rules.’
Fleet raised an eyebrow. ‘Money is the only rule in here, Mr Grace.’ He held his hand over the balcony and poured a stream of coins on to the ground by the clerk’s feet. ‘That should cover the shortfall.’
Grace blinked at the coins for a moment before scooping them up, wiping each one clean with his handkerchief and then pocketing them. He studied me for a long moment with a puzzled expression, as if I were a sum he had added up incorrectly and even now could not make work. ‘Well. It seems you are in Mr Fleet’s debt, sir,’ he said at last, and stalked off.
I stared up at my unexpected benefactor. It was hard to feel grateful, given his reputation. ‘Mr Fleet,’ I said, offering him a short bow. ‘How am I to repay you?’
Fleet grinned. ‘By staying alive, Mr Hawkins. And keeping me entertained.’ Then he drew back from the balcony into the shadows.
A few moments later I felt a tug on my coat tail. It was Benjamin, Gilbert Hand’s boy, returned with a large parcel of items wrapped in an old blanket and a hastily written note from Charles.
‘My dear Tom,’ he wrote. ‘Do not despair. I will find a way to help you. Until then I have given the boy some spare clothes, a cooking pot and a few other small items. For God’s sake be careful. I will pray for you. Your loving friend, Charles.’
I tucked the letter in my pocket. Benjamin had already crossed the yard towards my new quarters. Fleet’s room was in the first of the prisoners’ blocks, in the northwest corner of the gaol. As I strode after him I realised this must be Jack Carter’s brother. He’d been asking for Ben and now I looked I could see the resemblance. I stopped him at the main ward door and tried to take the parcel from him.
‘You should go to your brother,’ I said. ‘He’s asking for you.’
He snatched the parcel back and kicked the door open. ‘I’m working.’
And proud of it, too. Proud to be earning his keep. Benjamin had no need to climb the wall to escape the gaol like his brother Jack – he had found himself an occupation. But he couldn’t afford to stop working, even though he knew Jack would die tonight. Before I could stop myself, I pulled out half a shilling, vowing this would be my last good deed in this rotten place. The boy’s eyes widened and he went very still, holding his breath.
‘Here,’ I said, placing the coin in his hand. ‘You’re working for me tonight. Go to your brother, I’ll square it with Mr Hand. Go on, run, damn you! Before I change my mind.’
Fleet’s quarters were on the first floor. The room was bigger than the one I had just fled, with two beds and a large window overlooking the rackets wall and Acton’s house beyond. But it was so cluttered that I could scarce move without treading on something. It was more like a pawnbroker’s than a living space – a pawnbroker’s ransacked by lunatics. Towers of books teetered alarmingly against the walls, and the floor was a tussle of abandoned clothing jumbled with old wigs, dented tankards, spent pipes and what appeared to be an ivory tusk protruding from beneath a pair of leather breeches.
I picked my way across the room to what I decided must be my bed and cleared it of a small library of chapbooks, broadsides, novels and even – to my surprise – a bound and printed sermon. I had not taken Fleet as a man of faith. There was a short, hand-written message on the inside cover:
This usefull Discourse is
given to be seriously perused
and to be lent
about to other persons
gratis but must not
be sold, pawn’d or kept
too long nor be ill used
by any Reader
Rev’d Andrew Woodburn, 1725
The next several pages had been torn out, with some force.
I took out the coins Jakes had secured for me along with Moll’s half a guinea and laid them out upon the bed. I had walked out into the Park with the urgent intention of increasing my funds and two hours later was short almost a shilling. No more good turns, I warned myself again sternly. I couldn’t afford them.
I pulled off my jacket and lay down, closing my eyes. When I came to, the sun was setting, and a bell was ringing somewhere out in the Borough. I swallowed painfully, mouth dry and heavy. My head was pounding and my body ached from my beating the night before.
I ran my fingers carefully along my ribs. I had been lucky – there was no serious damage. At times the night’s attack felt like a fevered dream, so much had happened in the hours since I’d walked down that cursed alley. But now it felt close again, the memories playing round and round in my head, my cuts and bruises tingling and throbbing as if freshly made. If I had not gone with that link boy. If I had paid more attention to where we were going…
I made myself a pipe and limped across to a chair by the window. Outside, the nightwatchman was lighting the lamp in the middle of the yard while the prisoners wandered past in the long shadows. For the first time since my arrival, a kind of peace descended on the Marshalsea.
I was just beginning to doze off again when there was a smart rap at the door. I sat up, startled, to find a fit, dapper man of about thirty leaning against the doorway, studying me in a friendly way. He was well turned out, with a spotless lace-trimmed shirt and good wool breeches. He stepped like a dancer through the piles of Fleet’s belongings and offered his hand, his small, soft brown eyes shining with good humour. Some men one likes at once. I liked Trim at once.
‘How do you do, sir.’
‘How do you do, Mr…?’
‘Trim. Just Trim,’ he smiled. ‘The barber.’ He jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. ‘We’re neighbours.’
Trim’s cell was on the next landing, directly above mine. He’d rented a large, well-proportioned room with two neatly made beds tucked against the far wall, though the second lay empty. The last of the sun’s rays gleamed off the spotless floor and large bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, the clean, fresh scent of marjoram and meadowsweet masking a faint trace of tobacco and the fusty smell of damp wood that clung to all the prison quarters.
Trim placed a chair in the centre of the room, and motioned for me to sit down. I walked over, the floorboards creaking and bowing underfoot. It was clear that he took pride in his business – the room was as neat and clean as a barber’s in Mayfair, but he could do nothing about the general rottenness of the wards. He brought over a copper bowl of steaming hot water scented with lavender, laying it carefully on a small table next to a block of soap and a mirror with an ebony handle. He tied an apron about his waist and pulled a silver razor from its case.