Alms for Oblivion (24 page)

Doggett knocked at the inner door. Waited. Knocked again. Waited shorter. Knocked for longer. I am the law, the knock said, pay attention to me. The lantern-jawed gaoler looked up and gestured
impatiently with his pipe stem. Go through, the pipe stem said, and leave us in peace. The door wasn’t locked or bolted (and this surprised me). Doggett, conscious of the dignity of his office
and perhaps feeling a bit of a fool, undid the door and led the way in. Pushed by the Cyclops, I followed. Beyond the porch was a lobby. Here sat another gaoler. He too was busy after a fashion,
since he was scraping the dirt from under his fingernails with a knife and then examining the abundant material deposited on the tip of the blade before wiping it on his buff jerkin. This must have
been a very engrossing occupation because it was at least a minute before he looked up at our group, despite Doggett’s frequent coughing, hemming and throat-clearing. This gaoler said nothing
at first but, like the previous one, cast his eyes across our group. Then sighting down the blade of his little knife, in a style that reminded me of Tom Gally sighting down his index finger, he
indicated me.

“He’s the one.”

Given that I was accompanied by a couple of brothel-bullies, a foolish-looking constable and a villainous individual wearing a red patch over one eye, it took some perspicuity on the part of
this gaoler to single out the man the rest of them intended to lock up. If I’d been in his place I would have clapped up any one of my companions before myself.

“He is a most notorious malefactor,” said Doggett proudly.

“He looks it.”

“Has done terrible things.”

“They all have.”

“Monstrous deeds.”

The fingernail-picker was silent. He was not going to satisfy my escort by asking what those monstrous deeds were. I stood abashed. My heart and mind were almost numb. I could see the absurdity
of what was happening but could not feel it.

“He has performed murders a-plenty,” said Doggett finally, “and should be watched.”

“Oh, he’ll be watched,” said the gaoler, bending his attention once more to his nails. “Take him to Wagman. In there.”

We passed through yet another door. The entrance to this prison was as elaborate as the entrance to a palace – or a brothel. By now I knew the form. In a corner of a further room, slightly
larger, were two more gaolers (the ones I later christened Gog and Magog). They were not diverting themselves with a deck of cards or fingernail-scraping. They were not doing anything except,
perhaps, remembering to breathe from time to time. In the opposite corner, behind a delicately gilded table, there was a coffer-seat chair and on this was enthroned an outsized individual. On the
table was a whole goose-wing’s-worth of quill pens and a stack of finely bound ledgers. This fat man was Wagman, the principal turnkey, as I soon learned. He ran the business of justice, kept
the books, charged for accommodation, took movables like the gilded table or the quill pens in lieu of cash, & cetera.

I was enrolled by this chief turnkey into the prison’s Black Book. When I gave the name of my lodgings, in Dead Man’s Place, Wagman laughed. Then we turned to business and after that
I was left to myself. Constable Doggett seemed reluctant to abandon me since I was evidently such a catch, but he was eventually told to shog off by Wagman. The Cyclops departed with his brace of
bully-boys from Holland’s Leaguer, each of them giving me a farewell cuff about the head. Wagman looked on without objection. Gog and Magog gurgled in their corner before shoving me through
yet another door and showing me my lodgings for the night.

Once on the inside of the Counter, beyond all the porches, lobbies and ante-rooms, there was little sign that the place had been a church, except for a certain complacent solidity about the
walls. Luckily, I still had my money, in the purse which had first been intended to pay off part of my debt to the bookseller Nicholson and then, when that scheme failed due to his shop burning
down, had been intended for Nell (as gift rather than fee).

One of the four half-crowns in my purse was enough to buy a better house for the night than I would have enjoyed without the garnish, which is the gaolers’ quaint term for extortion-money.
By ‘better’ I mean a stenchy, cold, dank room little larger than a coffin, with straw for bedding, a couple of dirty sheets, and a candle-stub to illuminate all this misery. There were
rows of these cave-like residences on either side of a central passage, with a second floor reached by a rickety stairway. I was reminded of a honeycomb, but one built out of harsh limestone. My
cell was full of cobwebs. When I pushed the light into a corner it provoked much frantic, long-legged activity. There was a warped, battered door to the cell but it had no lock. The door was for
form’s sake only, without purpose. It wasn’t to keep me in – or to keep anyone else out, either. A prisoner with enough cash can walk out of almost any gaol in London, unless he
is much in demand by the authorities, as I was.

On the one hand, the cell wasn’t so much worse than my Dead Man’s Place crib, although smaller. On the other hand, I was paying much more to the turnkey for a single night here than I
had to my landlord Benwell for a whole week. It was an abuse. The turnkey Wagman should be locked up. In fact, the whole crew of gaolers looked – and behaved – as though they should
have been locked up. I believe many of them had been once, including Gog and Magog. Well, this cobwebbed, filthy chamber was my lodging until my money ran out – which it would do in about
three days’ time or even sooner (since I had to feed myself out of those three remaining half-crowns as well).

Shivering, I lay down to sleep on the thin pallet. I tried to put an end to this day. This terrible day which had begun with Bartholomew Ridd berating me over the missing sleeve from a costume
doublet and had ended with the discovery of the fatal purpose to which that sleeve had been put. In between, I had almost come to blows with a boatman, nearly been crippled or even killed by a
runaway cart, and witnessed a bookshop deliberately destroyed by fire. In the silence of Paul’s church by Duke Humphrey’s tomb I’d attempted to link these events together and
believed that I’d found the thread in the shape of those noble siblings, Robert and Virginia Venner. But I could not fit the latest and most terrible turn of events, the murder of Nell, into
any pattern at all.

Nothing made sense. Or did not make sense in my present state. I simply wanted to draw a curtain between myself and consciousness. But, even though it was night by the clock, the day refused to
crawl into a corner and die. I slept very fitfully. In the morning I woke to consider my situation. It didn’t take much consideration. My situation was bad. In fact, it could hardly have been
worse.

These prisons are like the world beyond the walls. That is, they are divided and subdivided into petty sections where the few lord it over the many. The few are the sergeants, turnkeys and
tipstaffs. The many are the miserable occupants. The former strut. The latter suffer, and try to make the time pass faster or slower, depending on whether they are comfortable or in pain. Mostly
they are in pain. Money counts even more on the inside than it does on the outside. Without the garnish you get banished to the Hole. Underground in the old church crypt huddled those wretches
whose purses were empty or never full in the first place or whose friends were penniless and unable to buy them their daily requisites. These, literally the lowest of the low, were condemned to a
perpetual twilight where they slept unblanketed on a bare floor and fed off charity scraps. The Southwark Counter wasn’t the worst for neglect and cruelty – I believe that the palm goes
to Newgate or the Fleet – but it was no laggard in this respect either. During the first night I slept very little, as I’ve said, partly because of my miserable state of mind and partly
because of the wails and moans coming up from beneath the ground, like the sounds of the damned in hell. For some reason the noise diminished during the day. By the second night I’d almost got
used to the din.

In any case I had my own troubles to attend to. There was not only my imminent danger, for it was obvious that I was going to be held to account for the murder of Nell, but also my great grief
at her death, and at the violent manner of it. All the little irritations and jealousies of our friendship subsided, and I remembered – or chose to remember – only the golden times
we’d enjoyed together. I thought not just of her body and its sweets, but of her self. Her good nature and her cheerful spirits. Her laughter and her quick wits. More than once, one of us had
tumbled out of bed, the narrow beds in my various lodgings or the wider one in her crib, convulsed with laughter at something the other had said or done. I recalled the time she’d tipped a
loaded chamber-pot out of the window straight on to the head of my landlady, Mistress Ransom. I’d forfeited my lodgings as a result but could not hold it against her. No more than she had held
against me my brief amour with the wife of a fellow member of the Chamberlain’s. She hadn’t held it against me when all was said and done. When all was sad and done . . .

Nell was an expert in what she called the sacking law and full of tales about it – for all that she’d only been at the game for three years or so. I couldn’t vouch for her
earlier time in the country though. In fact I had my suspicions of her activities before she arrived in London and we’d met. She’d told me once of how a penance had been imposed on some
country whore which required the said whore to stand at the church door, bare-legged and barefoot, wearing a white sheet and with a candle in her hand. Well, of course, she’d said, it just
offered the naughty woman a better chance to show off her wares. Plenty of men came by to ensure that she was keeping her penance and to get a good ogle. That was you, was it? I asked. She would
not answer except teasingly, but the story provided us with enough diversion for that day and, thinking of it again now in my little prison room, I laughed once more and then began to weep.

The tears – a drop in the bucket of misery in this church turned prison – were for myself as well as for her. Nell and I had arrived in this great city more or less at the same time
and now it seemed as though both of us had reached our term together. She, though, had died like the innocent she was while I would die a despised death on the scaffold. Blameworthy in the eyes of
the world (and this was before I had been interviewed for the second time by Coroner Talbot), I was to blame in my own eyes too. Guilt is contagious, spreading quickly from accuser to accused. And
who could deny that I carried the plague? All who knew me were bound to die, and die suddenly, by violent murder. Peter Agate, Richard Milford, and now Nell. It was just as well that Revill had
been taken off the streets and would shortly be hoist on to a scaffold, there to end his wretched existence before he could do more harm to innocent people.

I tried to console myself. First, with the knowledge of my own innocence. In this I had only a limited success for the reason I’ve already suggested. Second, I told myself that being in
prison was no great disgrace. Why, the playwright Ben Jonson had been incarcerated on a capital charge (but he had killed a man honourably in a duel). Others that I knew had been clapped up for
debt, for assault, for slander. Any man may swear out a warrant against another and, if he has the cash to secure a couple of arresting sergeants, will see his opponent brought behind bars for a
time. None of the Chamberlain’s Company would have thought the worse of me for being in clink if I’d been involved in a tavern brawl or defaulted on a debt. It was almost seen as a
badge of honour to fall foul of the law at least once. But to be accused of three killings . . . there was no way to wash this off.

So, when my friend Jack Wilson came to visit me not long after my interview with Talbot, I almost cried with gratitude. He’d had to pay to get in. This is the truth about prisons: you pay to
get in, you pay to stay in, you pay to get out. But the chief turnkey, the portly Wagman, had extorted only threepence from Jack, a little more than the groundlings paid at the Globe although for
an infinitely less cheerful spectacle.

“Oh Jack,” I said. “You don’t know how good it is to see a friendly face in this place.”

We were walking like sentries up and down a wide passage, which must have been the church aisle in earlier days, holy days. On either side were the coffin-sized rooms. A watery light filtered in
from the plain high windows at both ends. At the top end of the ‘aisle’ was a larger area – it was probably where the altar had once stood – in which those who could afford
to purchase food were permitted to sit at a table and consume whatever their purses stretched to. So far I had maintained my place at the table, eating and conversing fitfully with my fellow
prisoners. But my money was about to run out. Then, unless I could obtain credit, it would be down into the Hole, the hard floor and charity scraps.

This aisle was a place of communal activity, particularly during the reception of visitors. Urgent conversations, desperate bouts of laughter, whispered asides, elaborate negotiations,
occasional scuffles, all were staged on this little strip of flagged ground. From beneath our feet came the continual susurration of the people imprisoned in the crypt. Cellar rats.

“I am sorry to see you here, Nick, in this foul place.”

I noticed Jack surreptitiously pinching his nose from time to time. I’d already accustomed myself to the stench.

“How is our Company?” I said.

“Oh, we carry on, you know. We are preparing for two fresh pieces next week.”

“I remember. I was due to appear in both of them.”

“I am taking your part in one.”

“That’s
Fortune’s Eyes
?”

“Yes. Forgive me.”

For answer, I clapped him on the shoulder.

“While Michael Donegrace is taking your part in the other, in
The Law’s Delay
.”

“A wonderful title,” I said.

I couldn’t prevent the bitterness, the irony, entering into my voice. In this new play I’d been due to play the part of an advocate, a corrupt and eloquent pleader who may be bought
by the highest bidder. How apt that I now found myself subject to the law’s delay in reality – although I feared that all too soon I would be subjected to the law’s rigour.