‘Father, that is not true…’
His eyes flashed with rage. ‘And what would you know of truth?’ he cried. ‘Your whole life is built on shame and deceit.’
As I walked away from my father’s house, Jane ran after me and collapsed in my arms, tears streaming down her face. She had suffered more than anyone under my stepmother’s subtle tyranny, and now I was abandoning her for ever.
‘Promise you’ll write, Tom. Send word that you’re safe and well.’
I smiled and kissed her softly on her forehead. ‘I promise.’
But I never did. God forgive me, I broke my promise. When I arrived in London I vowed that I would never contact my family again. My father had disowned me; well, then, I would disown him too. I would make my own way in the world. And that – I decided – meant abandoning Jane, too. I forced myself not to think of my beloved sister, or the man I might have become if my stepbrother had not spoken out against me. I made new friends, and fell in love with London, and told myself it was all for the best.
Now that I was here, locked up in the Marshalsea, it was harder to convince myself of that. The thought of my father discovering my wretched condition filled me with a sort of bleak horror. I would rather die, I realised, I would rather be murdered in my bed by Samuel Fleet than be revealed to him as such a miserable failure. But Jane… thinking of her now, I felt ashamed of myself. She couldn’t run away, as I had – she had no choice but to stay and suffer. She’d been a prisoner long before I passed through the Lodge gate.
I felt a light tap on my arm. Trim was peering at me with a worried expression. ‘Are you well, Mr Hawkins?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, shaking myself from my thoughts. ‘A little tired, perhaps.’
He smiled gently. ‘The first night is always hard. Things will seem much better in the morning, I’m sure.’
I thanked him, and bowed to the company, who bid me goodnight before returning to their drinks and their dreams of freedom.
If I had not been so out of sorts I might well have stayed in the Tap Room all night rather than return to my lodgings and confront Samuel Fleet. I took a turn about the yard in the moonlight, trying to clear my head and delaying the moment I had to return to my cell. Belle Isle indeed. How on earth would I sleep tonight?
This morning, in the daylight, the prison had reminded me of my old college. But now I knew the walls were steeped in blood. Only a few hours ago I had watched the governor beat a boy almost to death in this yard. Now he sat behind the yellow curtains of his lodgings having supper with his family. The apparent order and respectability of the Master’s Side now seemed sinister and unsettling, especially in the dark. A thin veneer hiding the violence and corruption beneath. I could only guess at this on my first night in the gaol, but I would experience the truth at first hand soon enough.
As I reached the lantern in the centre of the Park a short, sturdy figure stepped into its warm glow. I gave a start. ‘Mr Hand. I thought you were a ghost.’
He chuckled. ‘Have they been filling your head with stories in the Tap Room? It’s not ghosts you have to worry about in here, Mr Hawkins.’
We talked for a while and he offered to light me to my room. As we walked towards the prison block a sudden scream rent the air.
‘God have mercy!’
I stopped dead, chilled to the bone. The cry had come from the other side of the wall. In all my life I had never heard such a desperate sound. The man cried out again, joined by another voice, and another – a hundred or more shouting their grief up into the night sky. I caught a few distinct voices. ‘Spare me, Lord!’ ‘God help a poor sinner!’ ‘Save us! Oh, God – save us!’ But the rest was just a heart-shredding din, that seemed to shake the very walls of the prison – the lamentation of souls trapped in a hell on earth.
‘My God,’ I said. ‘What ails them?’
Gilbert Hand spat on the ground. ‘It’s lock-up, poor devils. Acton has ’em packed so tight they can scarce breathe. It’s worse in the summer heat; I’ve seen ’em pull out a dozen each morning.’
‘A dozen sick?’
‘A dozen dead.’
I followed him in a daze as he led me back up to my room. Twelve prisoners dead each night? Surely that was not possible. But why would Hand lie? I felt sick to my stomach, and had to press my hand against the wall as we mounted the stairs so as not to fall. It was the thought of all those men and women dying for no good reason. And the thought that I could so easily find myself among them. In the lurching good cheer of the Tap Room I had forgotten for a moment how easy it would be to find myself thrown over the wall. I must not forget.
When we reached Fleet’s room I staggered to my bed and buried my head in my hands.
‘How’s business, Mr Fleet?’ Hand asked, cheerfully.
Fleet’s voice drifted across the room. ‘What ails the boy? Drink?’
‘Nah. Just the evening chorus.’
‘I see.’
I heard the chink of coins and Gilbert Hand’s light footsteps as he left the room. I looked up, dizzy with shock. Fleet was pouring cordial into a fine crystal glass. He crossed over to my bed and pressed the glass into my hand saying nothing, for once. He watched me carefully as I drank.
‘Thank you,’ I said, when I had finished. I rubbed my forehead slowly, my hands still shaking. ‘Does it become easier?’
‘That’s up to you, Mr Hawkins.’ He poured a glass himself, knocked it back in one gulp like medicine. ‘Your heart will break in here, or it will turn to stone. It’s your choice.’
‘And what happened to yours, sir?’
‘Oh…’ He drummed his fingers against his chest. ‘I don’t have one. Did they not tell you in the Tap Room?’
We were both quiet after that. I could still hear the cries from the Common Side – carried on the wind at first and then just in my head, churning round and round. That could be my voice, I thought. A few shillings less and I could be locked away with them. I stayed awake for as long as I could, afraid to sleep with Fleet so close by. Afraid to sleep in a dead man’s bed. And when at last I slept my dreams were cruel and filled with dread. A dark alley. A man in black stepping out of the shadows. A blade gleaming blue in the moonlight.
I awoke to the pungent scent of good tobacco. The room was dark, and there was a stillness in the air that only comes at the very dead of night. Fleet sat crouched like a hobgoblin in his chair by the window, clutching his journal to his chest and staring intently out into the yard. I moved softly under the sheets, heart hammering hard against my chest. He glanced at me, his face shadowed by the candle burning beside him. He pulled the pipe from his lips.
‘Go back to sleep, Mr Hawkins. You’re safe enough,’ he said, smoke wreathing about his face. And then he smiled. ‘For tonight.’
II) FRIDAY. THE SECOND DAY.
Chapter Seven
The next morning dawned bright and cold; so cold my breath clouded the air. I lay on my hard, thin mattress, scarcely able to move. It was as if a dozen horses had ridden across me in the night: the beating in St Giles playing out across my body.
Up. I must get up. I could not afford to lie here. I would not fall to the Common Side; I would not join those voices crying out in the dark. I dragged back the blanket and sat up slowly, rubbed my hand across my face. Sunlight sliced bright lines across the bed.
‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.’