Vanity (45 page)

It was bitterly cold, and when he managed to locate a wall, his hands encountered a thick coating of viscous filth running down the stone. He changed his mind about leaning against the wall, although he ached in every limb and an entire percussion orchestra played merrily in his head. His captors had been far from gentle with him, and several booted feet had found their way into his ribs and kidneys before two jailers had hurled him into this foul oubliette.

He yearned to sit down, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to get up again in his present weakened condition, loaded as he was with the double set of eight-pound irons. Already his ankles were rubbed raw, and when he lifted his chained hands to try to scrape some of the caked blood from over his eye, the effort brought sweat to his brow and left him gasping for breath.

Someone coughed, a painfully dry, hacking sound, and
a whole chorus started up. Rupert’s eyes were growing used to the dark now, and he could make out huddled shapes on the ground. Bundles of rag-covered sticks, they looked to him, and all completely mute, apart from the coughing.

Jail fever, he thought. With every breath, he was drawing in the contagious, infected air of this putrid dungeon, reeking with the stench of excrement. But maybe jail fever was an easier death than the scaffold.

His knees shook with the effort of keeping himself upright, and the chains at his wrists weighed down his arms like cannonballs. But he didn’t think they’d keep him in this hole too long.

It was standard procedure to throw a new prisoner loaded with chains into the worst dungeons, to let him languish for a while so that he’d be all the more eager to pay whatever extortion was demanded by his jailers if it would lighten his fetters and bring him more comfortable quarters.

But how long would they leave him to meditate in this horror? He was thirsty but could make out no water container in the darkness. Yielding at last, he leaned back against the foul wall, bending his knees and pressing his shoulders and the small of his back into the stone so his legs carried slightly less weight. Someone whimpered on the floor at his feet, and he shuffled sideways to avoid touching him with his boots.

He tried not to think of Octavia, but he couldn’t keep from his mind the tormenting images of her enforced submission to Philip. He saw her as she had been that morning, sitting up in bed, her glowing hair tumbling over her shoulders, the dark peaks of her breasts outlined beneath her nightgown, her eyes so filled with hurt and betrayal.

Surely he could have done something to lessen her hurt, to repair the breach. He hadn’t permitted obstacles to stand in the way of his goals since he’d run from Wyndham Manor as a despairing child. And yet, when Octavia had thrown up the wall against him, he’d bowed his head and accepted her judgment. He’d accepted it because he’d told himself it didn’t matter. He’d told himself he didn’t need
Octavia beyond the part she had to play in their joint venture. He’d told himself that, but his aching heart gave him the he, and he knew that he had accepted her withdrawal because what he’d done to her was indefensible.

The narrow grating in the door scraped back, the sound loud as cymbals in the fetid darkness. Then it banged shut again. A key turned in the lock, and there was a crash as the heavy bar across the door was flung upward.

Rupert’s heart jumped and he pushed himself upright. When they came for him, they’d not find him enfeebled and begging. But they hadn’t come for him. The door opened a crack and something was flung into the dungeon. It rolled over the stones, and the heaps of rags at Rupert’s feet seemed to come to life. They crawled, snatched, growled, tore at the loaf of bread, like so many starving dogs.

Rupert closed his eyes to the sight. God help him if he ever got to that stage. But it wouldn’t happen. His law-enforcing captors had robbed him of every last sou, including his watch, but Ben would come with money. Octavia would surely tell Ben of the disaster. Once she was able to get away from Philip …

A groan escaped him, the despairing sound so like the ones he’d been listening to that he began to feel more akin to his fellow prisoners, still scrabbling and feebly fighting over the scraps of bread. His head drooped onto his chest, and his arms hung loose in front of him, the weights dragging at his shoulders. He was going to have to sit on the floor. And yet stubborn pride still kept him on his feet.

The only sounds in the dungeon were the animal whimpers broken with violent spasms of coughing, and he found the lack of a human voice as disorienting as the darkness … and much more terrifying. His companions were so far lost in their subhuman misery that they couldn’t even acknowledge a fellow human being.

His hands and feet were numb with the cold, and his shoulders screamed with agony as the shackles pulled at them. He tried to stand very still because even the slightest
movement of his feet caused the irons at his ankles to dig deep into his abraded skin.

He had drifted into a nightmare trance of physical pain and excruciating fatigue, but he was still on his feet, though sagging against the wall, when the grill in the door scraped open again. It was followed by the rasping of the key and the thump of the bar.

This time the door opened fully, and Rupert blinked painfully in the sudden light from a lantern that the jailer held high, illuminating the filthy prison for the first time.

And then he saw the figure behind the jailer. A slender figure clad in black from head to toe, her face concealed behind a thick black veil.

“God in heaven!” Octavia said in a voice of horror, pushing the jailer aside as she stepped into the vileness.

Terror flooded Rupert. “Get out! You dolt, get her out of here!” he bellowed at the jailer, panic in his voice. “There’s infection in this foul air. Get her out!”

“Eh, ’old yer ’orses,” the jailer said. “Yer lady friend ’ere wanted to see ’ow you was doin’. Thought I was doin’ ye a favor.” He leered at the prisoner in the light of the lamp, one eye squinting up to the dripping ceiling.

Rupert lunged forward with a supreme effort, dragging his chains, ignoring the shrieks of his outraged muscles and galled skin. “Octavia,
leave!”

But she ignored him, taking a stumbling step toward him. “Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?” She grabbed his hands, helplessly chafing his numbed fingers.

“All right, out ye come, then,” the jailer said to Rupert with another leer. “Yer friends ’ave bought ye some easement. Lucky fer you, Lord Nick.”

Rupert shuffled toward the light of the oil lamp. He felt like a very old man who’d been dwelling in a subterranean cave, far from the light. And yet he guessed he hadn’t been imprisoned in this hell hole for more than a few hours. How long would it have taken to break him? Less time than he would once have believed possible. It was a humbling recognition of his own frailty.

Octavia was still clutching his hand, pulling him desperately
toward the door, as if afraid that if she didn’t get him out, he’d be condemned to this oubliette forever.

“You had no right to come here,” he said furiously, all his weakness miraculously vanished under his fear for her. “Of all the chuckle-headed things to do. Why didn’t you tell Ben, instead of coming yourself?”

“I did. He’s negotiating with the jailers for Peter,” Octavia said, tears springing to her eyes, not so much at the harshness of his tone as at her shock at his condition. How could a few short hours wreak such devastation on a man?

“Jailer, take these shackles off!” she demanded, grabbing the man’s arm as he walked ahead of them down the corridor. “How can he walk in these? There’s miles of this passage. His ankles are scraped to the bone.”

Tears clogged her voice but did nothing to lessen the fury of her determination. She knew they were both entirely dependent on the goodwill and avarice of the jailer, who could throw Rupert back into the dungeon if he chose, regardless of how much money she offered him, but her voice was still imperious as she fought to overpower the man’s potential malice with her own will.

“Do it, man! Do it now!”

“Can’t,” he said. “They’ll ’ave to be struck off in the lodge. When we gets upstairs, it’ll be done.”

“Dear God,” Octavia said in distress. “Let me hold them up for you.” Bending, she tried to lift the chains, but they were too heavy for her, and she dropped them with a cry of distress.

“It’s all right, Octavia,” Rupert said, wincing as her efforts to help caused more harm than good. “I walked here, I can walk back.”

“But it’s barbaric!”

“Yes,” he agreed dryly. Suddenly he wanted to laugh as the sweetest relief seeped through his veins. This was the Octavia he’d been missing during the last bleak weeks. Once again she was the appealing, courageous, candidly responsive partner whom he’d insensibly grown to love and need.

And beneath that recognition flowed the knowledge
that she could not have fetched Ben and come to his aid so speedily if she’d been forced to keep her assignation with Philip.

“You’re a veritable angel of mercy, my dear, but I wish you hadn’t come.” But he knew he was lying through his teeth. Just as he knew he had to ignore his own wishes and ensure that Octavia didn’t jeopardize her health or her identity a second time.

“You didn’t expect me not to, did you?” She sounded indignant, but he could see nothing of her face beneath the thick veil.

“I expected you to have more sense.” He paused, breathing heavily, trying to ignore the pain of his ankles. How much farther was it before they reached the light and air?

He began to speak softly but with conviction as the jailer, seemingly unaware that they’d stopped, plodded on ahead.

“If you stay away from me, there’s not the slightest need for you to be compromised. No one knows my true identity, and it probably won’t come out until the trial. By that time you and your father will be long gone, back to Northumberland. The news of a highwayman’s trial and execution won’t travel that far, and if it does, it won’t cause any particular interest.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said in a fierce undertone. “And, anyway, I’m not compromised. No one knows who I am under this veil, and they won’t. Prisoners have visitors all the time.”

“Eh, you there! You comin’, or did ye like yer ’ousin’ so much, ye’ve a mind to stay below,” the jailer called, holding his lantern high.

“Vile brute,” Octavia muttered. “Lean on me, Rup—I mean, Nick. Put your hand on my shoulder.”

He smiled slightly but didn’t avail himself of the offer, instead distracted his thoughts with what he was going to say to Ben when he saw him. The man must have been insane to have brought Octavia to Newgate. And not just
brought her, but allowed her to venture alone into the poisonous bowels of the dungeons.

At long last a spiral staircase appeared at the end of the freezing, dank passageway.

“How will you climb?” Octavia asked distressfully.

“I’ve climbed down them once,” Rupert said with a grimace. In fact, he hadn’t really climbed down them, his escort had essentially shoved him from top to bottom.

The climb was worse than he could have imagined, however, and he was pouring sweat when he finally managed to haul himself to the top of the staircase.

But at the top there was light and air of a kind. The air was still fetid, still stinking of excrement, but it moved a little in the faint breeze from the tiny windows set high up in the walls of the passage. Faces pressed to the barred gates of the crowded wards as they progressed down the corridor.

Octavia kept her eyes on the ground ahead, thankful for the veil that hid her face from the leering spectators, who called out to them as they passed, jeering oaths for the most part, with an occasional sympathetic remark for Rupert’s plight.

The jailer opened a door at the end of the passage, and they passed out into the press-yard. It was deserted, the prisoners all locked up for the night, and Rupert drew a deep breath of the warm night air. A blackbird burst into song, imitating a nightingale, and he was filled with an overpowering sense of the precious fragility of life.

“This way.” The jailer led the way into the narrow street between the two wings of the prison. It led to the jail gate, where a small building stood at the threshold of the prison.

Rupert recognized it from his admission—the lodge where they’d hammered the fetters to his ankles and wrists.

Inside, a brazier glowed red and a burly, bald-headed man looked up from his bellows as they entered.

“Strike ’em off, Joe,” the jailer said, spitting into the dust.

The man showed no reaction. With a grunt he indicated a block in the middle of the room, and Rupert heaved
his right foot up. The man swung his hammer twice and the links flew apart. Rupert put his left foot on the block, and the bald-headed man attacked the links with red-hot pincers.

Octavia stood in the doorway, her heart in her throat as she waited for the pincers to slip against Rupert’s leg. But the links glowed and fell apart and the highwayman stood free. His wrist manacles were dealt with in the same way, and he flexed his shoulders with a groan of relief.

“’Ave to put ’em on again when ye goes to the Old Bailey,” the jailer remarked. “But so long as ye pays yer garnish proper like, ye can move free about the state side … until they moves ye to the condemned cell, a’course.”

This last was said with a blunt matter-of-factness that Rupert blocked from his mind.

So they were moving him to the state side, the part of the prison reserved for those rich enough to pay for the comforts and privacy of a gentleman’s residence. The fee for admission was three guineas. Rupert had paid it himself for Gerald Abercorn and Derek Greenthorne, together with the ten shillings and sixpence a week rent for a single bed apiece. Presumably, Octavia and Ben had seen to the necessary payments.

He and Octavia followed the jailer to an internal gate and up a flight of stairs. Spacious, airy rooms opened off a passageway at the top. The air was clean and fresh, and the sound of voices and the chink of glasses came from behind the doors, locked for the night.

At the end the jailer flung open a door. “’Ere y’are, Lord Nick. Thanks to yer friends, ye’ve a whole room all to yerself.”