Dodger of the Dials (21 page)

Mouse got up from his bed and came towards us. ‘You reckon
that’s true, Dodger?’ he said as he began looking into the fireplace. ‘You think there’s a chance?’

‘We have to try,’ I replied.

By now Old Edwards’ blood had cooled and he had unclenched his fists. But instead of responding to my call to arms, it seemed as though the fight was leaving him and he returned to his bench while Mouse took the fire shovel from me and bent over the flames.

‘Edwards is old,’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘Too old for escapes. And besides, you don’t understand. It don’t matter what Sheppard did or did not do. This ain’t even the same prison.’

‘This is Newgate, innit?’ I said, as I joined Mouse by the fireplace. He had by now almost extinguished the fire and was waiting for the smoke to settle so we could investigate within.

‘It’s Newgate, yeah, but it’s altered. Most of it has been rebuilt over the years.’ The smoke was now beaten down so I stuck my head into the fireplace and looked upwards. It was very hard to see. ‘The outside walls are taller now,’ Edwards went on. ‘Harder to climb down from. And it’s near windowless.’ I climbed into the small fireplace as far as I could go and started to try and explore where it would take me. The space was cramped and pitch dark. ‘Most of the rooms beyond the fireplace would be occupied,’ I heard Old Edwards droning on. ‘So why you think you won’t be spotted trying to move through them is a mystery.’ I carried on and raised myself up as far as I could go. And then I felt the iron bars stretching across above me. Three thick rods all blocking my way. I looked beyond them to survey whether it would be possible to continue upwards if I could just remove them somehow. It looked unlikely.

‘Now be a good lad,’ said Edwards as I at last crawled out and back into the cell, admitting defeat. I did not need Mouse to tell me that my face had turned black, I could feel the soot caking my
cheeks. ‘And get that fire lit again. Before we all freeze to death first.’

*

Hours later, when no light was coming in through the window anymore, Mouse and myself huddled around the dying embers of the fire. We had our blankets over our shoulders and whispered to one another as Old Edwards snored from his bed.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said to Mouse, who was rubbing his hands over the last of the warmth, ‘I’m going to ask the guards for some stationery. Some paper and a pen. They’ll give it to me if I tell them I want to confess on it.’ Mouse looked up from the flames.

‘Confess?’ he spoke as if he had been waiting for me to say that. ‘So you did kill that man?’

‘No!’ I replied, once more affronted as to how he could believe that. ‘I’ve nothing to confess to,’ I hissed. ‘At least to no murders.’ He looked disappointed as if he had been hoping that I would say otherwise. It occurred to me that if I did own up to the crime then Mouse would be spared the noose. Perhaps that was why he had taken a sulky attitude when I was telling him about my hopes for escape earlier. He must have been praying that my plans to arrange his stay of execution would be simpler and more selfless. ‘Confessions are for the repentant,’ I put him right. ‘And I ain’t the type.’

‘Then what do you want the paper for?’ he asked. ‘It’s too late now to start your memoirs.’

‘I want to write down everything what really happened in Rylance’s room,’ I replied. ‘The way I found the body, the description of how he had been struck, the manner in which the metal box was already opened. And I want to send it to Billy Slade.’

‘Send it? Will they allow letters?’

‘Probably not, but I shall smuggle it out somehow. We’ll slip it
to the first person who comes to visit either of us. Perhaps Billy will even visit himself if we’re lucky.’ I edged forward to Mouse, in part to get closer to the fire but also so that he could hear my whispers better. ‘Everybody thinks we’re murderers, right, because that’s how it looked. And that’s how it was made to look. Even you thought I had killed Rylance at first, Mouse, and you was only in the other room. So imagine how it appears to the rest of society. The police, the courts, the newspaper men. They think we’re guilty because they have no reason not to. It’s been made easy for them to think the worst.’

Mouse sighed. This was something we had already discussed many times in our police cell before the trial. ‘Someone got in there first and done him in,’ he said as a statement of fact, ‘and we was sent there to take the blame for it.’

‘Right,’ I nodded. ‘You have to admit, it’s a clever ruse if you do want to kill a person. Nobody believes the burglar, ours is not a trade to inspire that sort of sympathy.’

‘And so it follows that the real killer is whoever got Billy Slade to hire us,’ Mouse said, repeating words I had already said to him on the previous days. ‘And so Slade must know who the real killer is.’

‘Perhaps he does, perhaps he don’t,’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps he knew that the job was suspicious before sending us in there and did not much care. Or perhaps he – like everyone else in the country – just assumes that we did it.’

‘Why would he think that? He knows we’re just cracksmen.’

‘Yeah, but it looks like something went wrong, don’t it? That’s what they’ll all be thinking, see. Not just the flats but the whole of the London underworld. They’ll think that we broke in there and surprised Rylance. A fight happened and we ended up killing him. Why would they think it’s any more complicated than that? Only
Tom and Georgie know for sure that we did not have barkers on us and what can they say? Anyone they tell will just think it’s criminal solidarity speaking. As for Slade, well he may well suspect we was set up or he might just think we’re a pair of incompetents. I need to put him right.’

The fire was out. I got to my feet and took my blanket back to my bed.

‘But what’ll Slade do about it?’ asked Mouse as he did the same. ‘He won’t come to our aid.’

‘No, but he’ll know not to trust this mystery man of his again and he could make him pay. And word will get around the community, Mouse. Meaning that your baby Robin might not grow up thinking his father was a killer.’

The sudden mention of his son silenced him. He lay down and covered himself in the blanket as I did likewise. I realised then that I had been speaking in such a way what suggested that I did not think we would dodge the gallows after all. I whispered over to him some final words before we both attempted sleep.

‘We will escape from here, Mouse. I promise you that. You just stick with me and things will be rosy.’ I lay down, shut my eyes and congratulated myself on managing to keep such an optimistic outlook in spite of the many adversities what I was undergoing. It is important to maintain a strength of mind during such testing times, I thought.

Before long I could feel dreams descending upon me again, the stamping of feet, the jeers of the crowd and that hated name being chanted over and over again.

Chapter 14
The Long and Forceful Punishment

Wherein I familiarise myself with life in a medieval dungeon

They had already lain out the coffin for Old Edwards when we entered the chapel. The nine of us what was sentenced to death over the coming weeks had to shuffle past it and two other wooden boxes, our movements restricted by the heavy fetters what had been placed around our arms and legs. We was ordered to seat ourselves in the condemned pew what was reserved for us alone while the rest of the chapel was already packed with unchained bodies waiting for the sermon to start. As I passed by the many rows I saw some of the long-serving convicts and tried to catch an eye. But they all looked away from us, most of them at the floor, and none made a sound.

It was Boxing Day but also the morning before Execution Monday and so this sermon was for the benefit of those due for the scaffold tomorrow. These three coffins was the very ones what they would be buried in afterwards and their soon-to-be occupants – Edwards and two other unfortunates – was all directed to sit at the end of the pew closest to them. In this way the Newgate Ordinary could address most of his sermon in their direction so that the rest of the congregation could be in no doubt as to who the stars of tomorrow’s show was to be. It was a large enough chapel and it needed to be, as not only did the entire prison attend these weekly services, but it was also stuffed full with local residents what had
paid the keepers of the gaol for admittance. These Sunday gawpers did not mind being heard whispering about us and many of them began eating once the sermon had begun. Elsewhere in the chapel I saw the female convicts who was kept on the far side from the men. The turnkeys made a big effort to separate us from them and I was chastised for even glancing in their direction. The only woman I was permitted to look upon was a trembling leaf named Alice who was sat on our pew near us. She was due to swing on the following Monday.

‘It is only repentance that can save your eternal souls now,’ droned the puffed-up old prune from high up on his pulpit. ‘Only God’s forgiveness can protect you from fiery damnation. This the Bible makes abundantly clear.’

This cove was an Ordinary in every sense. A squat, unremarkable man with nothing of the performer about him. If I was in his place and playing to a packed house like this one I would try and put some showmanship into it. I’d be pointing my finger up to the heavens and going on about fallen angels while all the time throwing my voice so even the Old Bailey ladies at the back could hear. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the place once I was done with them. But this grey cove had the peculiar talent of making even Fire and Brimstone sound as dull as a legal document.

‘If, however, He should choose not to answer your prayers,’ continued this master of ceremonies, ‘then Hell awaits you. Such it is writ in the Bible and so there we have it.’

I was sat next to Mouse at the furthest end of the pew and I glanced along the length of it to see Old Edwards at his end, head bowed and hands clenched in furious and desperate prayer. Alice, meanwhile, was inconsolable, and she could be heard babbling about how she had never meant her baby any harm and it had only been an accident. Soon every other convict along this pew was
praying too, including – I was amazed to notice – Mouse. I had never had him down as the religious sort and so his behaviour was a bafflement to me. But, I thought as he muttered away next to me, thoughts of imminent death was often apt to do funny things to a person.

I, however, just sat on that cold wooden bench and stared back at the Ordinary with as much defiance as I could muster. Prayer was not an indulgence what held any interest for me and the reasons for this was twofold. In the first instance, I was not guilty of killing Anthony Rylance and so I felt that I had nothing to ask forgiveness for anyway. I was an innocent man – that is if you’re prepared to overlook my many pilferings – and so to the Lord’s warm bosom I was assuredly bound. I was sure that He would agree that the injustices done against me was far greater than any of the small misdemeanours I may have committed in my time and so I did not feel as though this business of eternal damnation was my concern, in all honesty. Let these seven real murderers what Mouse and I was being made to share a pew with cower behind prayer if they cared to but my mind was busy plotting. Because, in the second instance, prayer was an activity required only by those what was resigned to their fate and I had no intention of still being here by the time they had a coffin ready for me. I was not set to swing until the Monday after next and this gave me plenty of time to make my lucky.

‘Death is not the End,’ the Ordinary went on, ‘for any of us. It is only to be feared by those with hands incarnadine.’

‘Hands in where?’ I turned to Mouse and whispered.

But it was Alice who answered, coming out of her penitent position to do so. ‘Hands incarnadine,’ she whispered before returning to her prayers. ‘It means us.’

Nobody had come to visit me so far. Visitors was permitted on
Christmas Day and Mouse had been seen by the midwife woman who was now taking care of his son without payment. He had promised to get some money for her to continue to look after little Robin and he was still planning on selling his suit for this purpose. But the turnkeys had announced with undisguised pleasure that no one had called to offer their season’s greetings for the poor Artful and this I found to be very hurtful. My disappointment in Lily Lennox was deep as, although it had been a comfort to see her weeping for me from the galleries of the Old Bailey, she had been unable to visit my police cell before the trial and now it was starting to look like she was not coming to Newgate either. I could understand why none of my Diallers was paying me a visit – once a thief is sentenced to death he is already dead, that is how other thieves view it, and I was nobody’s top sawyer now. But Lily had been sharing my bed for over a year now and I would have expected more love and loyalty from her than this. But now that my fortunes had fallen and I was captured by the state it looked as though she had disappeared from my side. My heart burned at the abandonment.

Once the Boxing Day service was over we was all led out of the chapel and back to the Felon’s Press Yard to take some exercise with the long-serving convicts. Old Edwards, Alice and the others who was swinging tomorrow was all returned to their cells to contemplate their sins while the rest of us was unshackled for the walk. We then joined the group of thirty other convicts in the high-walled hexagon yard and proceeded to tramp around in a slow and shuffling circle while the turnkeys looked on to make sure that none of us spoke to one another. I was desperate to engage anybody in conversation but whenever I tried to speak to any of the old lags I was told to shut up by a turnkey. The long-servers looked reluctant to respond anyhow and they seemed to be trying
to avoid me and Mouse. Perhaps they thought that death sentences was catching.

And so instead I had to carry on with that dull rotation for another hour, wondering for what purpose the gaolers felt I should have for exercise if I was due for the drop. However, the benefit of these press yard walks for me was that I got the chance to make a study of Newgate, its layout and workings. I was very practised in the art of breaking into locked places and, it occurred to me as I searched for potential weak spots in the prison walls, that breaking out of a locked place was not so very different. I had still not quite devised how exactly escape was to be achieved but I had no doubt that a solution would present itself if I paid attention.