Dodger of the Dials (20 page)

‘Enough Jack Ketching, you young wretch!’ He spoke like he had not taken a drop of anything in weeks. ‘We don’t need reminding of Ketch, we’ll meet him soon enough.’

I looked about the rest of the cell and saw that it was large enough for two more of these stone beds. Mouse was sitting on one and staring up at the barred window. He did not seem to be
paying any attention to this old cove what was rasping in my face about someone called Old Edwards.

‘Old Edwards don’t wish to be sharing his cell with none others on his final nights alive,’ continued this man. ‘Old Edwards will bloody throttle you if you don’t pipe down.’ Mouse then turned his head towards me and nodded to see me awake.

‘He’s been carrying on like that for the past hour now,’ he said, as if he was already bored of the performance. ‘Took me an age to fall in that Old Edwards was himself.’

‘One more murder won’t matter much to Old Edwards now!’ continued Old Edwards and he spat upon the ground. I now recalled seeing our aged cellmate when we was first tossed into this shared accommodation by the turnkeys but I had been in a state of high emotion at the time and had not introduced myself in a formal manner. And so it therefore followed that this old sod was under the false impression that he was the dominant prisoner in this little room and in this misconception he needed correcting. I took a moment to wipe the sweat from off my brow with the sheet and I then forced myself up to meet my confused aggressor face to face.

‘If Old Edwards knows what’s good for him,’ I said locking eyes and pointing over to the unoccupied bench, ‘he’ll go back to his own side before Young Dawkins here knocks the last remaining tooth out of his head.’ The old man looked surprised by this sudden flash of fire and he inched backwards at it. His long grey hair flopped down over the sides of his head like a pair of dog ears and he gave me a low growl to show me he was unafraid. But, like any dog, he seemed to recognise a fiercer animal when he saw one and so before long he picked himself and crossed back to his own bed.

‘Just keep your peace then,’ he muttered as he went. ‘That goes for the pair of you.’

Once this matter was settled, I sat myself upright and took an appraisal our situation. Unlike Mouse and myself Old Edwards was wearing brown and shapeless prison clothes while we was still dressed in the suits what Jacob had provided us with before our trial. Mine was by now much crinkled and covered in sweat but I still felt an odd pride in being better dressed than most prisoners would be. I scratched behind my neck and stared into the fire. My head ached from the thinness of the pillow so I felt no urge to lay back down again. Then, seeing how nobody else was going to say anything, I decided to instigate some conversation.

‘This place stinks of vinegar,’ I observed, and I gave the older man a look like I suspected it was emanating from him. ‘And piss,’ I added.

‘It’s for the lice,’ said Old Edwards like he resented my implication. ‘Lice spread typhus so the gaolers scrub it into the walls to kill them off.’ I got the sense that he enjoyed knowing more about this dungeon than I did. ‘The vinegar I mean,’ he added. ‘The piss smell is from the bucket.’

He had a small lisp what I imagined might be the result of his split lip and I wondered if the turnkeys had given it to him. I gave him a short nod to acknowledge thanks for the information and another silence passed. But then I was up from my bed, clapped my hands together and crossed over to the fire to warm them.

‘You know what this place could use, eh, Mouse?’ I said as I crouched over the licking flames and tried to affect a more agreeable manner. ‘Some festive decorations. It’s Christmas Eve today in case you’ve forgotten. But you wouldn’t know it looking around this miserable hole, eh? They ain’t made much of an effort for us, have they? It’s all cobwebs.’ I blew at one such web what hung from the side of the grate and then I pointed at the place on the wall where a Sheriff’s notice was hanging. ‘I would like to see a nice
holly wreath covering that, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps a picture of some robins in the snow. That’d be cheering. Also, how about some chestnuts to warm over this here fire?’ I added, and looked over to Old Edwards. ‘Who do we see about all that then?’

The old man hesitated before answering. He looked unsure as to whether I was jesting with him or not. ‘Ask the turnkeys,’ he suggested at last. ‘They’d give you something in exchange for your suit there. They paid me two pennies for my clothes and they weren’t as smart as the ones you two boys have on.’

‘And what d’you want tuppence for in this horrible place?’ asked Mouse in sudden irritation. ‘You’re set for the noose same as us, ain’t you?’

Old Edwards became despondent at this mention of his imminent fate and he looked down to his shoes. ‘Gave the pennies to my daughter when she came,’ he rasped, ‘if you must know.’ Mouse’s demeanour altered at the words. He pulled himself forward to perch on the end of his bed.

‘You can do that, can you?’ he asked our cellmate with keen interest. ‘Give money to visitors.’ He looked over to me after Old Edwards had nodded. ‘I’m selling my suit then,’ he declared. ‘And giving the money to Robin when his midwife visits. She’s bound to come.’

I experienced a sharp stab of guilt on hearing that. I had been bragging to Mouse not so very long ago about how together we would see to it that his son would never want for nothing. And now here he was excited at the prospect of bequeathing the boy with two measly pennies before he departed the earth. I had proven to be a rotten top sawyer to him and his next of kin and, what was furthermore, I was at a loss to imagine who might come to visit me what would be worth giving such coins to. My mother had been hanged herself some years before and, considering that
Kat Dawkins was never the sentimental sort anyhow, I very much doubted that she would have come to visit me in prison even if she was still alive. Would Lily come? I hoped so. But my sort of person does not set foot into Newgate if he or she does not need to. I have known plenty of good friends what may have occupied this very cell over the years and, to my great shame, I had not visited one of them.

I felt that despair was then about to overcome me and I slumped down onto the stone bench in silence. I wanted to cry but fought hard not to. I would not lose mastery of myself in front of Mouse and this other person.

‘Well then,’ I sniffed, after what felt like an hour of all three of us just staring into the fire had passed, ‘if the turnkeys want my clothes off me then they’ll have to make a more generous offer than that.’

Mouse seemed surprised to hear me resume the conversation after so long a pause. But I stood up and occupied the centre of the cell so he could see that the same old Jack Dawkins was in here with him and that our terrible circumstances had not damaged my spirits just yet.

‘No, sir, I shan’t be selling my portable property for pennies and neither, Mouse Flynn, should you be. We’re celebrated murderers, we are.’

I looked to Old Edwards to see if he was impressed by the announcement but his eyes did not leave the flames.

‘That’s right, Edwards,’ I continued regardless. ‘You’re in the company of famous men. You should see some of the publicity what we’ve been getting over the past few days. Our suits would be worth a fortune to Madame Tussaud’s if only she could get her greedy paws on them. I daresay that the enterprising madam is working hard on our waxworks already, eh, Mouse?’ I grinned at
him then and he just stared back at me like I had run mad. At last he managed a weak smile in return. I pointed to him for the benefit of Old Edwards.

‘That there is the notorious Mouse Flynn,’ I said by way of introduction, ‘and my name is Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger. Don’t pretend you ain’t heard of me, you’ll just embarrass yourself.’

‘He ain’t listening to you, Jack,’ said Mouse as the old boy ignored us. But there was something about his tone what suggested that what he was really telling me was that he wasn’t listening either.

‘He doesn’t have to,’ I crossed the cell and sat myself down next to Mouse on his bed, ‘but you do. Because there is something very important I need to explain to you, Mouse.’ He looked back and I could see tiredness and defeat on his face. While I had been having nightmares he had been weeping to himself about our plight – that was obvious from looking into his eyes. ‘Because you are going to see your little boy again. And I don’t mean when his midwife visits. I mean, out there,’ I indicated the small barred window. ‘On the other side of those walls.’

‘We’re sentenced to death, Jack,’ he replied with a crack in his voice. ‘A reprieve ain’t likely. Jacob said so.’ I put my arms around his shoulders to show him what good company he was still in.

‘I ain’t talking about a reprieve, am I? Jacob is right, nobody with any power is interested in helping us. There ain’t a soul in this world what would stick their necks out to save ours. No, we have to look out for ourselves if we’re to live to see old age.’

Mouse blinked. His mouth opened but to no purpose.

‘Because I’ve got no intention of getting hanged in two Mondays’ time,’ I told him. ‘It’s a barbarism no decent Englishman should be prepared to suffer and old Jack Ketch will just have lump it. I
had already made up my mind to take flight before the judge had finished speaking and you, my boy, are coming with me. By the time the gaolers comes to collect us, we shall be long gone from Newgate, from London even. We’ll be on the continent, I imagine, sipping wine and learning the local language with your baby Robin playing at our feet.’

‘Escape?’ he said at last. ‘But how?’

Now there he had me.

‘Well, I ain’t worked that out yet, Mouse. I’ve only been in here ten minutes, give us a chance. But stop looking so gloomy, eh? It’s going to be just rosy.’

‘You always say things are going to be rosy, Dodger,’ he said at last. ‘That’s all you ever say and they never are.’

This sullen response took me back a bit. I felt it was thin gratitude for the deliverance that I was offering him. From the other bed came an awful groan though as the old man heaved himself into life again.

‘Escape?’ he wheezed. ‘From the Stone Jug? Old Edwards calls you a fool.’

‘I don’t recall inviting Old Edwards along,’ I replied, ‘so tell him to mind his own business.’

‘It can’t be done,’ he continued, ‘and you’ll be killed trying.’

‘Killed, you reckon?’ I replied, employing all my powers of parody. ‘How awful. Well, if my life’s in danger I don’t think I’ll bother.’ I turned to Mouse and rolled my eyes, hoping he would give a smile. He said nothing.

‘You can mock,’ Edwards persisted, ‘but there are worse fates than a dignified hanging.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘I had a friend once,’ he persisted as he reached for a bent poker to touch the fire, ‘what was here twenty year ago. Sentenced to
drop. But on the Sunday night before his execution he breaks free from his cell and somehow gets into the south quadrangle just outside here. Tries scaling a drainpipe but, just as he reaches the roof, falls and breaks both his legs. A very long drop, this one. Surgeon dresses his wounds and he’s carried to the gallows anyhow. Blood gushes from both of his damaged limbs as he thrashes under the noose. They say the first four lines of spectators was all sprayed crimson. No dignity to it.’

‘I don’t wish to offend you, Edwards,’ I said once he had finished with his delightful tale, ‘but your friend sounds like a proper clown. Countless people have escaped from this prison over the years. I’ve met several of them down the Three Cripples, among other places.’

‘You’ve met several liars then.’

‘Your trouble is that you’re lazy,’ I told him. ‘And you lack my ambition.’ I turned from the old man and back to Mouse. ‘Let’s not listen to him. He’s nothing but doom. We’ll escape out of here through hard work and daring. Just like Jack Sheppard did.’

With that Old Edwards gave another moan and dropped down onto his bed. ‘Not another one on about Sheppard!’ he said. ‘That was a hundred year ago.’

Jack Sheppard was a highwayman from the previous century. He must have been a hopeless crook – as evidenced by the way he was forever getting himself captured – but his fame rested instead on his skills as an escapologist. He had broken out of prison four times and two of those occasions was from Newgate. I had read about his exploits many times and, for all I knew, I was now occupying the same cell where Sheppard had managed to first unfetter himself. He had not escaped through the window – as even without the iron bars it was the size and depth of a small bread oven – but had continued his campaign of liberation by instead climbing up
the chimney and somehow gaining access to the room above. I jumped up from the bed again and strode back to the grate for examination.

‘Don’t you put out that fire!’ warned Old Edwards once he saw what I was trying to do. I wanted to better inspect how large a space there was for a person to crawl inside and in doing so was using a small brass fire shovel what rested beside the wall to bat the flames down some. The old man jumped up from his bed and came running over to me with his fists ready, ‘I said, don’t touch that fire!’ I was back up again before he reached me and I managed to fend him off with a light shove. But although the man stopped in his tracks he kept on glaring at me and adopted a fighting stance that seemed practised but also unsteady.

‘That fire stays ablaze!’ he continued shouting. ‘It’s all we got left in this world. Just some warmth and light before our final hour. Don’t you put it out or you’ll put out the last thing we have!’

‘I ain’t going to put it out,’ I answered back. ‘Or if I do I’ll get it relit again. But I need to see if I can squeeze up this passage.’

‘You can’t, so leave it alone!’

‘I can! It’s what Sheppard did. He went up the chimney, smashed his way into the grate in the room above, broke through three other doors and made his way up to the high wall. Then he tied some blankets together and hooked one end over a chimney before lowering himself down onto the opposite roof. He achieved all that unaided. But there could be three of us if you could just stop being so difficult and start helping out. We could be out of here in a third of the time.’ The old man hesitated and behind him I could feel Mouse leaning in closer. ‘A bit of solidarity is what we need. Are our interests not all the same? One last fire? Not if we work together there won’t be.’