Dodger of the Dials (35 page)

When I caught up with the others I saw that relations between Eliza and Alice was not cordial. Eliza was trying to force Alice to get a hold of herself and move quicker. She had an arm around the girl’s shoulder and was shouting in her ear but as I came close she let go of Alice who slumped to her knees into the river.

‘Hopeless bitch!’ Eliza screamed at me over the noise of the water. ‘You take her.’ She waded off towards a thin shaft of light what was now visible from the top of the tunnel just ahead. Alice was on all fours in the river and her clothes was splattered with crap and so I reached down to lift her up again.

‘See that,’ I said as I held her shivering body. I was pointing towards the shaft what Eliza was now under. ‘That’s where we’re going. This is over soon. We’re going to live, Alice.’ She grabbed my shirt with her brown-caked fist and picked herself up. I felt a great responsibility towards this girl what had been set to be my scaffold sister in a few hours’ time and, because she was becoming so immovable, I decided that there was one thing for it. ‘You carry the lamp,’ I said handing it to her, ‘and I’ll carry you.’

As we approached the place where the light shone down from, I saw Eliza trying to get up some wooden step-ladder what had been lowered down from above, but her passage upwards was obstructed. She was engaged in an altercation with someone up there who I could not see. As I drew near, with Alice in my arms, she turned to me.

‘Look! The Rum’s boy has got her!’ Eliza was heard shouting. ‘She ain’t abandoned, you stroppy tart. Let me up!’ Eliza then
forced her way up into the break in the roof. I carried Alice up to the ladder and I saw two heads looking down on us. The first was Sessina’s and the other belonged to a stranger who I guessed must be the owner of that house.

‘Now
there
is a gentleman,’ remarked this woman on seeing me with Alice in my arms.

‘Lift her up, Dawkins,’ said Sessina. ‘We’ll take her.’ Alice was only little but by now it seemed like she had doubled in weight what with all the sewage she was covered in. I hauled her upwards and told her to reach out for the others and soon the women had got hold of her and dragged her up. Once she was through I cast aside the lamp, took hold of the ladder and ascended into the freedom of that small cellar in Old Seacoal Lane.

‘Cast your clothes down into the river,’ ordered the lady of the house, whose name I never discovered, once I was fished out of the hole in her floor. I had landed into a room full of women for the second time that night. ‘Then get in one of them tubs.’

The four female escapees was all unrigged from their sewer-ruined clothing and was stood in these bathtubs where some other members of the household was handing them bars of soap and pouring buckets of clean water over them. I too did as I was bid and removed all my convict clothes before casting them down into the Fleet. Then the ladder was pulled up, the home-made trap shut over it, a rug covered the trapdoor and a wardrobe was moved on top of it all. If any investigating gaolers were to search this cellar later on they would find nothing untoward. I joined the others then and stepped into one of the tubs to wash myself also. We all smelt and looked disgusting so the scene of me in a bath with four naked women was not as stimulating as you might imagine. I was too busy scrubbing shit off my skin to really enjoy the moment.

‘Don’t get comfortable,’ said the housekeeper as she handed
towels to the first women out of the tubs. ‘Once the gaolers notice you all gone they may find the passage. Unlikely, but it don’t mean nothing anyway if you ain’t here.’

‘We need clothes, don’t we?!’ Meg demanded. ‘You can’t sling us out into the night like this.’ As she said that a box was produced full of dresses and ladies under-things. These was handed out to Sessina and the others.

‘The Rum said it was to be all women,’ the housekeeper smirked as she eyed me up and down. ‘So you have a choice, my pretty one. You can leave here in the clothes of my dead grandfather or you can put on one of them frocks. Either way, the street entrance is up them stairs.’ I covered myself in the towel and stepped out of the tub. ‘So congratulations ladies and gentleman,’ she then grinned as she took the coin-purse what Sessina had brought with her. ‘You’re all free to go your separate ways. Be dears and shut the door on the way out, why don’t you?’

*

As I stepped out onto Old Seacoal Lane, dressed in the ill-fitting clothes of someone’s dead grandfather, I could hear the faint but too familiar sound of the St Sepulchre bells chiming four times. That was when the glory of being outside of the prison walls really struck home and I wanted to bend over and kiss the wet cobbles. We was still far too close to the prison however, and Sessina and the others all planned to head southwards down the Old Kent Road without delay. They asked me whether I wished to come with them.

‘We could use a man in our party, Dawkins,’ said Sessina, whose plan was to make for Dover and get passage abroad. ‘To look out for our interests.’

‘Yeah, why not?’ said Meg. ‘Our little band might need a bawd if we’re to earn our keep as we travel.’

‘You ladies need nothing of the sort,’ I told them before I made to head off in the other direction. ‘You’re all more than capable of looking after yourselves.’

I bid them all goodbye and good luck, and dashed off in a different direction, hoping that those smelly women all travelling as one might lead any pursuers off in a different direction to mine. As I ran off towards Fleet Street, I thought I heard the voice of young Alice wish me good luck in return.

Getting free of Newgate had been enough of an ordeal but – as the hapless Jack Sheppard had discovered – keeping free of it was an even tougher challenge. I spent much of the next hour scurrying around most frantic in an effort to stay away from the main lights of the thoroughfare. This vicinity was close to several police stations and I was sure that their carriages would be galloping around in all directions as soon as the alarm from Newgate was raised. So I kept moving along the shadows and hidden passages to avoid recapture, staying out of sight whenever I heard hurried footsteps in a nearby street in case it should be a peeler on patrol. I was so conflicted as to what my next step should be that I had not advanced far enough away and instead kept moving in circles. But revenge dominated my thoughts. Billy Slade had visited me in prison less than nine hours before to boast of his victory over me. So I was desperate to get to that brothel where he lived so I could make a surprise appearance, kill him, grab Lily and flee London. How hard could all that be?

But the morning was dark, I was tired and the clothes I wore was so soiled that it was unlikely that I should be able to pick a pocket to pay for a cab fare anytime soon. But if I travelled on foot I would lose more precious hours. What I needed to do was find a friendly place to change into something less conspicuous and to borrow money. I would have to find someone who was sympathetic to my
plight but who I also knew I could trust. I considered going to the Three Cripples and waking up Barney but I was unsure what I would find there. My old gang was all Slade men now and if I were seen then word of my escape might reach him before I did. No, I needed the aid of a friend unconnected to the underworld and also one what lived nearby. And it was then, on the very moment when I reached that conclusion, that a little boy told me what to do next. He must have been about eleven years of age and was strolling past the place where Fleet Street meets Fetter Lane, clutching a big stack of broadsides and calling out for custom. It must have been not even five o’clock by then and this boy was the very model of the early bird. By the confident and full-throated way he was calling out the headline of the broadside itself I guessed that he must have been a news-vendor’s son, but it was his three word cry what grabbed my attention. Monday morning was, dare we forget, gallows day and it was clear that this industrious young cove had an intention of beating the competition when it came to selling these one-sheet documents to those heading towards Newgate for a good spot. And today was to be a busy day, as his vocal advertisements was making clear. It was the morning when the Artful Dodger – the notorious killer of Anthony Rylance – was going to drop for the deed and so attendance was expected to be high. But it was the headline, as I poked my head around the corner of a narrow alley across the way, what provided me with inspiration as to how to proceed.

‘Dodger to Twist!’ the boy shouted like it was the most obvious suggestion. ‘Dodger to Twist!’

I crept out of the alleyway where I had been hiding and I began to cross the road to where the boy stood. Night would not be lifting for some hours and, as I got close, I saw the boy jump at the sight of me. I stopped in my tracks and tried to strike as
inconspicuous a pose as possible but I could see in his face that I must have appeared most terrifying. He stopped in his patter and took a step back. This, after all, was a boy what made his living shouting about murderers in the early hours of the morning so I guessed that he must have had a fertile imagination when it came to strange-looking men appearing from out of the shadows.

‘And a good morning to you, my dear,’ I smiled, using the sort of language what I felt would be most effective at putting a child at ease. ‘Is that a newspaper you’ve got there, I wonder? I should very much like to procure a copy of the
Morning Chronicle
if you have one.’

The boy still eyed me with deep suspicion and his nose crinkled in disgust. It seemed as though that quick wash I had taken had not rid me of the raw smell of sewage. But the boy did not run. This was his job after all and he was standing in full view of a major thoroughfare where carriages was passing, so he had no reason to be scared. He shook his head and held up the broadside so I could read it for myself.

‘
Chronicle
won’t be printed for hours,’ he said as if I were a fool to ask. ‘My father makes these. It’s about the Artful Dodger of Seven Dials. That’s him what’s going to twist later today. If you go to Gallows Corner now you should get yourself a good spot. It’ll be heaving with people soon enough so I wouldn’t tarry. One penny if you want the broadside as a remembrance of the fine occasion.’

I refused the offer of such a glorious souvenir and told him that I was a
Chronicle
reader what was most anxious to get myself a copy as soon as the ink was dry. ‘Any idea where the offices might be?’ I asked him. ‘I expect you must know something like that being a Fleet Street boy and all.’ The boy shook his head and told me he had no idea where the newspaper offices was but agreed that it must be hereabout. He then told me that if I wanted to read one of
last week’s editions for gratis then he knew where they threw the unsold copies. It was in a dustcart off an alley further towards the Strand if I wanted one. I thanked the boy and I felt his curious eyes follow me as I darted straight off in that direction.

I found myself somehow disappointed, when I at last found a whole heap of unwanted newspapers just where the boy had directed me, not to find more headlines about the famous Dodger of the Dials emblazoned across their various front pages. It’s amazing how fast one gets accustomed to fame. Instead, the
Chronicle
seemed preoccupied with whatever Queen Victoria and her German husband was up to that week and I considered, as I flipped through its pages, that its middle-class readers must be a very dull bunch if they would rather hear about their daily doings than mine. However it was not for any news story that I had tracked down this particular organ but for something much more important. Oliver Twist had told me that he would often spend all night above the offices of the
Morning Chronicle
and so this was where I was headed in the hope that he would be there. And, sure enough, I soon found that very address written in very fine print on the inside cover.

Number 332, the Strand. It was, as both myself and the broadside boy had suspected, very close to where I then was. In no time I found myself at the corner of Wellington Street looking up at the tall building with its many windows, behind any of which Twist could be sleeping. Furthermore, because the area was very busy with carts, vehicles and pedestrians even at this early hour, there was no chance that I could lurk about unnoticed for long. The place was a news office though, and there was already a number of well-dressed and important-looking coves arriving at the front door and unlocking it for work. Also, behind a number of the uncurtained windows above there seemed to be candlelight and so I reasoned
that this was a place where people worked throughout the night. It may have been a reckless act for a man what has just escaped Newgate Prison, but I made up my mind to march straight over to the offices of that newspaper and knock. A small and rectangular gold plate declared
The Morning Chronicle
outside and so I rapped on the thick door hard. It was then opened by a short, hunched little man who I had seen admitting the last person to enter. Now he had placed a little chain over the door and was poking his face through the gap in a quizzical manner.

‘How do you do there?’ I said and gave a short bow as I had no hat to remove, ‘I’m looking for Oliver Twist.’

‘Never heard of him,’ said the old man and he went to shut the door on me.

‘Wait!’ I said and put my hand in the way to stop him. ‘Not Twist. Brownlow! I’m after Oliver Brownlow.’

‘And what business might you have with Mr Brownlow, sir?’ asked the old boy as he looked me over with a disapproving sniff. I took him to be some sort of doorman what had been employed to keep undesirable callers away from the men of letters within and he was doing a decent job of it.

‘He won’t thank you for turning me away, my old geezer,’ I said with some urgency. ‘It’s about a story he’s interested in. So if he’s up there then give him my message sharpish, will you?’

‘What’s your name then,
sir
?’

I was prepared for this.

‘My name is Blake,’ I told him. ‘William Blake.’ The old man chuckled.

‘Is that right?’ he said with an amused shake of the head. ‘Well, you’ll have to make an appointment I’m afraid, Mr Blake, as Mr Brownlow already has a meeting scheduled with a certain John Milton after breakfast.’ He smiled at his own wit and began to shut
the door again. ‘Good day to you, sir.’ I shoved my foot into the gap preventing its closure.