Tarquin jumped from the phaeton. "Take the reins," he instructed, thrusting them into the astonished guard's hands. "Where will I find the keeper of this place?"
"Eh, Yer 'Onor, at 'is breakfast, I don't doubt." The guard looked in alarm at the two pawing horses that had become his charge. "In 'is 'ouse," he added helpfully.
"And where might that be?" Quentin asked swiftly, sensing Tarquin was within an inch of throttling the guard.
" 'Cross the yard, on the left. 'Ouse that stands alone."
"Thank you." Quentin fished out a sovereign. "For your trouble. There'll be another when we return." Then he set off after Tarquin, who had already disappeared through the postern gate.
The yard was surrounded by high walls. A whipping post stood prominently in the middle, stocks and a pillory beside it. To one side a massive treadmill turned, groaning with each revolution. A team of women, petticoats kilted to their knees, feet bare, wearily trod its circumference, a jailer with a long-lashed whip exhorting them to greater effort as he paced around them.
One quick glance told both men that Juliana had not been harnessed to that barbarous toil. Tarquin banged on the door of a squat cottage standing apart from the long, narrow, low-pitched building that housed the Bridewell.
"All right… all right… I'm a-comin'." The door opened and a woman poked her head out. She would once have been pretty, smooth-cheeked, with merry blue eyes and golden hair. But her face now was pitted with smallpox, her eyes shadowed with spite and the barren acceptance of a barren existence, her gray-streaked hair hanging in lank ringlets to her scrawny shoulders. Her eyes widened as she took in the visitors.
"I wish to have speech with the keeper of this place," Tarquin stated brusquely. "Fetch him, my good woman."
" 'E's at 'is breakfast, my lord." She bobbed a curtsy. "But if'n ye'd care to step this way." She gestured behind her into a dingy, smelly passageway.
Tarquin took the invitation, Quentin on his heels. The passage gave onto a square room, reeking of stale fried onions and boiling cods' heads. A man in a filthy waistcoat, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, was scooping boiled tripe into his mouth with the blade of his knife.
He looked up as the door opened. "Agnes, I told you I weren't to be disturbed..,." Then his voice faded as he saw his visitors. A sly look came into his eyes. He wiped his dripping chin with the back of his hand and said in a fawning tone, "Well, what can Jeremiah Bloggs do fer ye, good sirs?"
Tarquin could see he was already calculating how much of a bribe he could squeeze out of whatever this situation was. Keepers of the prisons earned no salary, but they were free to extort and "fee" both prisoners and their visitors for anything they could come up with.
"I have an order for the release of a woman brought in here by mistake this morning," he said, laying the document on a corner of the dirt-encrusted table. "If you'd be so good as to have her fetched."
The sly look intensified. Bloggs stroked a loose-flapping lower lip with a thumb tip. "Well, it ain't quite that easy, 'onored sir."
"Of course it is," snapped the duke. "This document states that the prisoner Juliana Beresford is to be released immediately. Without let or hindrance. If you have difficulty performing your duties, my good man, I shall ensure that you are replaced by someone who does not."
The sly look became a malevolent glare. "I don't know where she might be 'eld, Yer 'Onor," he whined. "There's a dozen or so wards, includin' the lunatic ones. Per'aps ye'd like to look fer 'er yerselves. Might be quicker, like."
"Certainly. But you are accompanying us."
Muttering under his breath, the keeper abandoned his tripe, drained his mug of blue ruin, picked up a massive ring of keys, and stomped ahead of them out to the court.
The stench of excreta overwhelmed them the minute the door was opened onto the building. Quentin choked. Tarquin pulled out his handkerchief and held it to his nose, his expression even grimmer than before. The keeper was unaffected by the reek. He maneuvered his large bulk down the passage, stopping at each barred ward, unlocking the door and gesturing sullenly that they should look in.
Thin, dull-eyed women looked back at them without pausing in the rhythmic pounding of their mallets. Rats rustled through the filthy straw at their feet; their jailers sat taking their ease on stools against the walls, occasionally swinging their rods when they judged someone was slacking.
Quentin couldn't keep the horror from his face. He had always known these places existed and, indeed, had assumed that houses of correction were necessary for the smooth running of society. But in the face of this unutterable reeking misery, he began to question his assumptions. He glanced at his brother. Tarquin's countenance was utterly impassive-a sure sign of turmoil within.
At the sixth ward they stopped outside an iron-bound door. Mr. Bloggs inserted the key. "If she ain't in 'ere, sirs, I can't think where she'd be. Less'n she be lunatic already; or they've put 'er on the treadmill. Which it's to be 'oped they 'aven't. Seein' as 'ow it's all a mistake, like." He grunted with what could almost have been a chuckle at the thought of an innocent suffering from such an error. "Can't think what Sir John could be a-doin', makin' such a mistake." He swung the door open and stood aside.
Juliana was lost in the rhythm of the mallet. She allowed her eyes to see only the hemp in front of her. As the fibers began to separate, a grim satisfaction tilled her. She thought of nothing more than the disintegration of the hemp. The pounding was in her ears, in her blood, the condition of her hands a distant agony that she knew instinctively she mustn't focus upon. Beside her Lilly pounded away. Without exchanging a glance they flipped Rosamund's pathetic work from one stump to another. But despite their efforts Rosamund's hands were bleeding and mangled within the first hour, as Maggie had gleefully foreseen, and her tears mingled with the blood dripping onto the hemp.
There had to be a way out of this nightmare. But Juliana's brain was deadened by the numbing, repetitive noise and the creeping dullness of fatigue. She'd had no sleep for twenty-four hours, and this work would presumably continue until nightfall. It wasn't possible to think, to do anything, but force her body through the motions and watch the hemp.
At the moment the door opened, Rosamund cried out. The mallet dropped, bouncing on the tree stump. She stared with fixed intensity at her hands, her eyes widening in horror. She raised her eyes to gaze wildly around the room, as if coming to a realization of her surroundings for the first time; then, with another cry of despair, she crumpled to the filthy straw.
Juliana dropped to her knees, Lilly beside her. They ignored the commotion at the door. Lilly lifted Rosamund's head, laying it in her lap. Juliana wanted to chafe her hands but didn't dare to touch them. Her own stung unmercifully now that her concentration had been broken, but she stroked Rosamund's deathly white cheek.
"Fetch some hartshorn and water, man!" She threw the instruction over her shoulder in the direction of where she'd last seen the jailer.
Maggie cackled. " 'Arts'orn and water. And would m'lady like 'er smellin' salts, then? Or a burned feather, per'aps?"
Juliana was on her feet in one bound. She turned on the grinning woman, her eyes spitting rage, her bloody hands raised. Maggie took a step backward as the flaming-haired Fury advanced on her.
'"Juliana! Don't make matters worse than they are."
She whirled toward the door as the quiet voice crashed through her crimson rage. His voice was quiet but his eyes were hot as lava, and there was a white shade around his taut mouth, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Juliana saw only anger-no indication of his agonies of the last hour, not a hint of the glorious rush of relief as he saw her unbroken and not seriously harmed.