Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (5 page)

There were 150 prisons within the city, some of which could hold no more than a couple of prisoners at a time, and this number did not include the many sponging-houses where a gentleman debtor might lay his head for a time in more comfortable surroundings, usually the bailiff’s own home. Sponging-houses – so named because the Turks or Jews that lowered themselves to become bailiffs would sponge the debtor dry of everything but his name – at least kept his body out of the gaol.

One hundred and fifty prisons, just over 350 crimes settled by hempen rope, and still every gaol full; for the promise of death had never been a deterrent for the criminal as long as the noose awaited even for the burglary of a couple of silver spoons. Best to take the householder’s life as well, then, to deprive the law of a witness.

Devlin patted himself down. Everything about him, everything that
was
him, had been taken save his clothes, and even of them he was short his hat and coat, and those small things mattered. Without them he was less. He was poor again, to the outsider’s eye at least. Until he got his hands on pistol and sword. They would be welcome to judge him then.

He found he could stand and his manacles afforded him a wide circle of movement. He gingerly felt the tender swelling of his head. Thankfully the blow had been expertly administered and he was grateful to Jonathan Wild for that much. Just a little dried blood remained where the silver cap of the bludgeon had cracked into him.

He looked up to the only hole of light in the room. Night was settling. August night. The trundle of carriages and the cries of street hawkers still carried on, giving hope that life was not too far away. But he had missed his appointment with the prince, and perhaps that would be his ticket out.

Just to let someone know and hope that Dandon was not too drunk to not be missing him also. He thought of Dandon, who would be back to the
Shadow
and Peter Sam, and he thought of the ship whispering up the Thames, black flag fluttering and her guns ready to prey on the city like Drake at Panama whilst someone tried to remember how to load the Tower’s minions against a pirate.

Aye, there was confidence at the thought of his hundred men or so at Deptford and its assurance made him stride to the door and bang loudly to announce just who he was.

He hammered three times, shouting for some soul to come to the trap in the door. He waited, he listened, his anger growing. He could hear the sounds of a tavern nearby and guessed he was immured near the taproom where prisoners could purchase brandy, wine and tobacco with not too great a profit to the institution, as one might expect given the circumstances of the clientèle. Small beer also available courtesy of Mr Willcox, whose store was set up at the Newgate Street traders’ entrance where prisoners could likewise purchase their chandler’s wares, or ‘garnish’.

Newgate may have been a gaol but like all gaols it was a private concern and even those with death at their shoulders held that an Englishman had the right to drink to his king if he so wished; and London still turned on the pull of a horse, a knife and a cork. The whole business dependent on the prisoner.

A dog barked at Devlin’s hammering and was ‘whist’d’ with a kick. Prisoners had long been permitted to bring in their dogs, pigs, birds, even their wives and children. The families would hang around waiting for their men to pay their debts either to the king or ‘Jack Ketch’ – whoever came first to claim their due.

Devlin banged again and the weary bulk of Thomas Langley, sub-turnkey, scraped itself from its stool and tankard to waddle to the trap in the door of the hold.

Mrs Spurling, purveyor of watery brandy, called after him.

‘Thomas! Be leaving him whoever he is. You be done for the day!’

He waved her down with a flap of his hand. ‘No bones, woman. I’m sub-, day and night. I’ll quiet him down anyways.’

Devlin heard and stepped back from the small wooden hatch lest a hardened bull’s pizzle greet him with a stab to his eye. The door slid aside; Thomas Langley’s slothful face filled the gap and squinted at the figure in white shirt, now almost blue in the evening light.

‘Cease prisoner! What ails?’

Devlin could see nothing but the pale unshaven face and the small eyes shaded by the fur of eyebrows that even covered Thomas’s eyelids.

‘Where am I?’

‘You are in Newgate’s lodge, squire. Until such time as your disposition is assessed and your garnish paid.’

‘
Garnish
?’

Thomas sighed deeply. ‘Your garnish. Payment for candles, rent, food. Don’t be thinking you’re staying in Newgate without dues. But I gathers that Jon Wild brought you in with no coin so you best be hoping that some soul be trotting along tomorrow to garnish you himself.’

‘That man, Wild, stole my coin.’

‘Aye, maybe so, but what does that matter if you killed one of his? Reckon that’s a poor purse for a man’s life and I reckon the Justice tomorrow will see it the same, don’t you?’

Devlin saw Thomas’s eyes glint, and imagined that his unseen fist was tightening around his bludgeon.

‘And what if I can’t pay?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘You ain’t no debtor. Murder’s for felons. So it’s the Common Side for you. And if you can’t pay no garnish for the Common Side . . . ain’t no hope for you in Newgate, squire.’ He began to close the partition then paused with a happier tone. ‘You’re lucky it’s Monday. Hanging’s already done. You’ve got a week to live at least. Though it be a long one!’

Devlin came close to the door, his hard eyes staying Thomas’s hand to keep the small gap open a while longer.

‘Who determines my ability to pay, Turnkey? Who rules this place?’

‘That be Mister Rowse and Mister Perry. The principals. As I said, hangings is today and they ain’t back yet. You’ll see them tomorrow, afore the Justice.’ Again he went to slam the wood back but Devlin came closer still and his hands pushed against the door so hard that Thomas saw the dust shake from the hinges. Thomas raised his weapon in his fist despite the wooden and iron door between them, which his malice penetrated as Devlin’s voice blew hot on his face.

‘I’m warning, Turnkey: no good will come from keeping me
here. If your principals return tonight it will be best for you if you send them to me.’ He repeated the crucial aspect.

‘Best for you.’

He turned away and let the words hang in the air – appropriate for such surroundings.

‘Bring me water, food, and some light, or I will let it be known I was neglected.’ The panel began to slide shut, Devlin timing his last words to the movement. ‘You may leave, Turnkey.’ And then Devlin began to walk, a thinking, rattling circle around his cell that barely faded as Thomas went back to his beer, at first with a sneer and then thoughtful, pondering on the cut of the prisoner’s damask waistcoat and Holland-tailored shirt.

But those brown bucket boots were old and worn. As old as a conquistador’s. And that tanned face belonged to no sitting gentleman but a man of the sea or field. Thomas drank with a snort. ‘“You may leave, Turnkey!”’ he mocked through his beer but thought on, slower, his eyes back to the door and his ears to the scraping of the chain as it dragged around the cell.

He lifted a finger to old Mrs Spurling. ‘Fetch us some wine and broth, Missus. Stump of candle.’

Mrs Spurling gave him a disparaging glance and stopped pouring a half-quart of brandy for the Earl standing at the bar.

‘I’m sure he’ll be good for it,’ he answered her look and went back to his beer. ‘I’ve seen his kind before.’

The further east Dandon trotted the newer and tighter the city became. Here and there were memories of older buildings, the medieval heart of the city with ancient stone and Roman gods weeping down at the thoroughfares. Most of her churches were still miraculously standing, although with blackened marks where The Fire had bitten into them, curiously like a shark, before moving on to far more palatable wooden delicacies.

Here were no horses, the roads too narrow and dark for gentlemen after the broad thoroughfares and smooth, elegant stonework of St James’s. These passages had been cut through London’s veins for speed, for those unwilling to travel down to Holborn and civility to hail a cab.

The city had been rebuilt but had learnt little, as wooden and clay houses still towered high above, overshadowing the passageways. Some of the alleyways even now held shanties with little more than sheets for walls and timber frames like army billets where naked fires burnt within and hollow-eyed children stared as you passed.

Dandon, accustomed to the pastel freshness of the American colonial towns and the wide, sparse Caribbean hamlets, hurried through the city’s smothering closeness like a man drowning, clawing for air.

And then at last he broke the surface as the wide expanse of Giltspur street, Newgate, Bailey, St Sepulchre, the taverns and shops, burst him back into civilisation.

He leant against a wall, gasping for breath. He and Timms had run and walked for two miles without a care for Dandon’s thirst, and he wiped his face with his cuff. His lungs were bursting, his head aching.

He pushed himself away from the wall, looking up at it, its grim façade declaring that it could be nothing but a gaol.

‘We are here, Mister Timms?’

Timms took his arm impatiently. ‘This is the Giltspur compter. For gentlemen who have not caused grievous harm and owe very little, and for clergymen who disrobe where they should not. Hell is this way.’ He pulled at Dandon, who gathered his wits and staggered on.

‘Is there a hurry, Mister Timms? Do prisons close?’

‘The hurry, sir, is in the concern that your pirate may have given word and used His Highness’s name. The
concern
is that your captain is a notorious brigand that is overdue to hang, but, most of all, it is the
concern
that he may not be in there at all and but that you and I will be in there for breakfast tomorrow!’

They had crossed the street. The gatehouse of the old prison still stood across Newgate street, the last of the gates into the old city. Dandon took in the face of the gaol that stretched down Old Bailey.

Rebuilt after The Fire and Restoration it was now plain Tuscan in style. Four great arched windows rose either side of the ‘keep’, barred and glassless, and high enough for Dandon to presume their light covered the unfortunates’ wards.

The keep made up the entrance of the prison, the glazed windows above it and the circular window in the roof’s pediment surely the chapel. Dandon looked around the street at the proliferation of blooms, now crushed and scattered, littering the road and pavement.

‘The flowers!’ His surprise halted Timms.

‘It is Monday. Executions this morning. The crowds like to toss flowers at the felons. It is good luck to give a nosegay to the condemned.’

Dandon stooped to pluck up a bloom and explained himself to Timms’s raised eyebrow.

‘I may have need of luck.’

Left and right of the keep were the lodges and the residences of the principal turnkeys. Shallow steps led up to a simple alcoved door. Timms took the right one, whispering as he did so that the left-hand side was where the condemned came out for their free coach.

‘Would be a bad omen I’m sure to walk up such which so many only ever come down.’ He rapped on the door with his fist, regretting that he had no cane with him.

They stood awkwardly together in the cramped space waiting for answer and looked at the door or the street rather than each other, in case nerves betrayed their fears or their press-ganged partnership fell apart and one killed the other.

Timms rapped again, harder this time. He called through the wood, ‘I hope someone will let us in at least!’

Dandon smirked. ‘Not a sentiment one expects to hear outside a prison door. Its peculiarity I’m sure will bring someone. If only to direct us to Bethlem instead.’

Timms ceased in his reproach as a panel unlocked and the face of Thomas Langley peered at them, bored already. He looked up and down Timms’s coachman-black perfection and then at Dandon’s shabby coat and wilting hat.

‘Dropping off?’ he asked Timms.

‘I need to see a list of prisoners you may have brought in perhaps today or Sunday, my man. Immediately and on royal warrant.’

Thomas audibly sucked out a sliver of pork from a back tooth and swallowed it. ‘No principal in at the moment. Can’t see any list without one.’

‘I demand to see that list, Turnkey! My warrant grants me entry to any manor in this city! Now open up immediately!’

Langley shook his head, his eyes almost closing. ‘No entry to the list without a principal’s say. Come back tomorrow.’

Timms flashed his winning hand in Langley’s face. The smudge of red seal and royal ribbon upon the paper. ‘
This
, sir, dismisses any power that you may suppose your principal supposes he may have in this foul place and I insist that you allow me entry!’

Langley gave a limp eye to the paper and then back to its bearer. He knew that the man in front of him was only one month’s bad gambling away from being welcomed within his domain. He had seen enough viscounts and courtiers shitting in front of him to be unimpressed by fancy pieces of paper.