Morgan’s Run

PART TWO

From

October of 1784

until

January of 1786

The Briftol Newgate was two buildings down from Wafborough’s brass foundry on Narrow Wine Street. Richard and Willy Insell in their midst, the eight bailiffs made short work of the walk and entered the prison through a massively barred door not unlike a portcullis. A narrow passageway with an opening on either side was Richard’s first sight of Newgate’s interior; hardly pausing, the head bailiff hustled them through the left-hand portal with a shove from behind by his henchmen, who remained outside.

“Prisoners Morgan and Insell!” he barked. “Sign, please.”

A man lounging on a chair behind a table reached for the two pieces of paper the bailiff presented. “And where d’ye expect me to put them?” he asked, signing each paper with a large X.

“Your business, Walter, not mine,” said the bailiff smugly. “They are on a writ of habeas corpus,” he added, walking out.

Willy was weeping copiously; Richard stood dry-eyed and composed. The shock was wearing off, he was able to feel and think again, and knew himself unsurprised. What was he charged with? When would he find out? Yes, he had Ceely’s watch and note of hand, but he had told the person in the lane that Ceely would get his watch back, and he had not taken the note of hand to Ceely’s bank. Why hadn’t he thought?

Overcrowding would help him be acquitted. The practical men of Bristol’s Bench were prone these days to come to an agreement with any accused who could marshal the funds to make restitution, pay something extra by way of damages. Though he would be loaded down for the rest of his life with a debt only another war and more guns could pay off, he knew that his family would not desert him.

“A penny a day for bread,” the gaoler named Walter was saying, “until ye’re tried. If ye’re convicted, it goes up to tuppence.”

“Starvation,” said Richard spontaneously.

The gaoler came around his desk and struck Richard across the mouth so hard that his lip split. “No smart remarks, Morgan! In here ye live and die according to my rules and at my convenience.” He lifted his head and bellowed, “Shift yerselves, ye bastards!”

Two men carrying bludgeons rushed into the room.

“Chain ’em,” said Walter, rubbing his hand.

Staunching the blood with his shirt cuff, Richard walked with the blubbering Willy Insell across the passageway and into the room on the right-hand side. It looked a little like a saddler’s shop, except that the multitude of straps hanging all over its walls were made of iron links, not leather.

Leg irons were considered sufficient in the Bristol Newgate; Richard stood while the sorry-looking individual responsible for this storehouse of misery kitted him out with his fetters. The two-inch-wide band which confined his left ankle was locked, not riveted, and it was joined to the similar band on his right ankle by a two-foot length of chain. This permitted him to walk at a shuffle, but not to step out or run. When Willy panicked and tried to fight, he was beaten to the ground with bludgeons. His split lip still bleeding, Richard said and did nothing. The remark to Walter the gaoler was the last time, he vowed, that he would court abuse. It was back to his days at Colston’s-sit quietly, stand quietly, do whatever was bidden quietly, attract nobody’s attention.

The passageway terminated in another barred gate; a keeper unlocked it with a massive key and the two new prisoners, Morgan and Insell, were thrust through it into Hell. Which was a very big room, its stone walls oozing moisture so consistently yet insidiously that in many places the surface had sprouted long limestone icicles gone black and furred with the soot of the factoried Froom. Not a stick of furniture. A flagged floor filthy with the slicks of age and ammoniac human emissions. A crowded mass of leg-ironed prisoners, all male. They mostly sat on the floor with their legs stretched out in front of them; some moved aimlessly about, too leached of life to lift their burdened feet over the legs of some other wretch, who continued to sit as if he had not felt the blow of the walker’s chain. To someone accustomed to Bristol mud, the stench was familiar-rot, muck, excrement. Just stronger from poor ventilation.

The only purposeful activity was going on around an arched opening in the far end of the room; though he had never been inside the Bristol Newgate, Richard deduced that through the aperture lay the prison taproom. In there, those who could scrape up the coins necessary would be served with rum, gin, beer. Hearing Dick and Cousin James-the-druggist talk had given Richard an idea of what the Newgate might be like, and he had visualized it as boiling with fights over money and booze, bread and property. But, he understood now, the gaolers were too shrewd to let that happen. None of these men had the strength to fight. They were starving, and a good proportion of them were also drunk on empty bellies, drooling and humming tunelessly, sitting with their legs stretched out, far away from care.

Willy would not leave him. Willy stuck to him like a burr. No matter which direction Richard took, there was Willy shuffling in his wake, weeping. I shall go mad. I cannot bear it. And yet I will not go back to rum. Or take to gin as cheaper. After all, this hideous ordeal will be over in some months-however long it takes for the courts to get around to our turn, mine and Willy’s. Why must he howl so? What good does that do him?

At the end of an hour he was weary; the iron bands around his ankles were beginning to hurt. Finding a vacant piece of wall big enough to accommodate him and his shadow, he lowered himself to the ground and stretched his legs out in front of him with a sigh of relief, understanding immediately why the prisoners adopted this posture. It took the weight off the fetters, let their backs rest on the floor. An examination of his thick knitted stockings revealed that after a mere hour of walking, the fabric was already showing signs of wear and tear. Another reason why these people did not move around.

He was thirsty. A pipe poked through the Froom wall and sent a steady trickle of water into a horse trough; a tin dipper on a chain served as a drinking vessel. Even as he stared at it, one of the ambulating wretches paused to piss into the trough. Which, he noted, was situated right next to four naked privies optimistically deemed sufficient for the needs of over 200 men. If Cousin James-the-druggist is right, he thought, drinking that water will kill me. This room is stuffed with sick men.

As if the very name had the power to work a miracle, Cousin James-the-druggist appeared in the barred doorway from the passage; Dick was with him, hanging back.

“Father! Cousin James!” he called.

Eyes distended in horror, they picked their way over to him.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, Dick fell to his knees and broke down. Richard sat patting his heaving shoulders and looked across them at the apothecary.

“We have brought you a flagon of small beer,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, producing it out of a sack. “There is food too.”

Willy had cried himself into an exhausted doze, but woke when Richard shook him. Never had anything tasted as good as that beer! Passing the unstoppered jug to Willy, Richard reached into the sack and found bread, cheese and a dozen fresh apples. In a corner of his mind he had wondered if perhaps the sight of these goodies would bring that apathetic throng to a fever of clawing hands and bared teeth, but it did not. They were truly lost.

Regaining his composure, Dick wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt. “This is awful! Awful!”

“It will not last forever, Father,” said Richard, unsmiling; he did not want to split the lip again and alarm Dick even more. “In time my trial will come up and I will be freed.” He hesitated. “Am I able to go bail?”

“I do not yet know,” said Cousin James-the-druggist briskly, “but I am going to see Cousin Henry-the-lawyer first thing in the morning, and then we will beard the lion in the Prosecutions Office at the courthouse. Be of good cheer, Richard. The Morgans are well known in Bristol and ye’re a Free Man in good standing. I know the popinjay who is pressing the charges-usually to be found ee-awing in the vicinity of the Tolzey like the donkey he is.”

“I do not know how the news spread so far so fast,” said Dick, “but before we left to find you here Senhor Habitas turned up. His eldest daughter is married to an Elton, and Sir Abraham Isaac Elton is a very good friend. He said you may be certain that Sir Abraham Isaac will be the presiding judge at your trial, and while he may serve ye a hideous homily on the temptations of a Lilith, the charges will not stick. Everything depends upon the advice a judge gives to his jury. This Ceely Trevillian is despised-every man on the jury will recognize him instantly and laugh himself sick.”

The two Morgans did not stay long, and shortly after their departure Richard became profoundly glad of it. The ordeal and the small beer were working cruelly on his bowels. He had to sit on a filthy privy seat with his breeches and underdrawers around his knees, on full view. Not that anyone cared save he. Nor was there a breech-clout to wipe himself with, drop into the soapy water of the laundering bucket; he had to get to his feet and pull up his underdrawers over the last of a runny mess, his eyes closed against the most appalling shame he had ever experienced. From that moment on, he was more conscious of his own smell than of the ghastly fug around him.

Nightfall saw them shifted from this common-room up a flight of steps to the men’s dormitory, another enormous room, and endowed with too few pallets to accommodate those in residence. Figures lay on some, apparently had so lain all day in the throes of fever; one or two would never move again. But as he and Willy were new and therefore quick, they found a pair of vacant stretchers and took possession. No mattresses, no sheets, no pillows, no blankets. And stiff with the dried remnants of dysentery and vomit.

Sleep seemed unlikely to come. The place was freezingly damp and his only covering was his greatcoat. For Willy, who had wept so, the terrors of the Bristol Newgate had not the power to keep him awake; Richard profoundly thanked a merciless God for the small mercy of Willy’s silence. He lay listening to the moans and snores, the occasional hacking cough, someone retching, and the terrible sound of a little boy’s weeping. For not all the prisoners were grown men. Among the crowd he had counted about twenty boys who might have been any age from seven to thirteen, none of them depraved or riddled with vices, though at least half of them were drunk. Caught pinching a mug of gin or a handkerchief and prosecuted for it by the irate victim. Not things which happened at the Cooper’s Arms, simply because Dick did not permit them to happen. If some ragamuffin did sneak in and whip a mug of rum from under a dreaming nose, Dick always managed to calm feelings down, would boot the urchin out the door and give the violated customer a free drink. It did not happen more than once or twice a year. Broad Street saw few crimes other than filched wallets or reputations.

The news that Dick and Cousin James-the-druggist had brought was cheering, no denying that. Senhor Habitas was an unexpected ally-still writhing over the fact that it had been he who introduced Richard to Mr. Thomas Latimer, clearly. Poor man! What blame could be laid at his door? These things happen, thought Richard drowsily, closed his eyes and fell immediately into dreamless darkness.

Late in the afternoon on the morrow Dick appeared alone with a sack of food and small beer over his shoulder.

“Jim is still at Cousin Henry’s chambers,” he explained as he squatted on his hunkers close enough to keep what he said private from all ears but those of the avidly eavesdropping Willy.

“It has not gone as we expected,” said Richard flatly.

“Yes.” Dick clenched his hands and gritted his teeth. “You are not to be tried in Bristol, Richard. Ceely Trevillian lodged his suit with the authorities in Gloucester on the ground that the crime occurred in Clifton, and therefore outside Bristol’s borders. Your detention in our Newgate is temporary-only until the papers are officially approved and the witnesses’ testimony processed, whatever that means.” He waved his hands about wildly. “My head is ringing with legal talk! I do not understand it-I never have understood it-and I never will understand it!”

Richard leaned his head against the blackened wall and gazed beyond his father’s hunched form to the pissy horse trough and the four disgusting privies. “Well,” he said at last through a tight throat, “be all that as it may, Father, I have some more urgent needs.” He gestured toward his feet. “First of all, I must have rags to pad these irons. One day, and my stockings have worn through. Tomorrow it will be my skin, and the day after that, my flesh. If I am to come out of this-and I swear I will!-I must keep my good health. As long as I can drink small beer and eat bread, cheese, meat and fruit or green vegetables, I will not suffer.”

“They will send ye to Gloucester Castle,” said Dick, lips quivering. “I do not know a soul in Gloucester.”

“Nor does any other Morgan, I suspect. What a clever fellow is this Ceely Trevillian! And how much he wants me down. Is it for the excise fraud and his neck, or because I derided him as a man?” He shook his head, smiled. “Both, probably.”

“I heard a rumor,” said Dick doubtfully.

“Tell me, Father. My weeping days are over, you need not be afraid that I will shame ye,” said Richardly gently.

His father’s face reddened. “Well, it came to me through Davy Evans, my new rum distiller-beautiful drop, Richard! He told me that the trade is saying that Cave and Thorne went to Trevillian the moment they heard about your rumpus in Clifton, and asked him to prosecute you and Willy. You and I know that Trevillian is actively involved in the excise fraud, but the trade is ignorant of that, and has made the connection a different way. Davy Evans says Cave and Thorne want you and Willy convicted felons before the excise case can come to court. Then there is no case, for felons cannot testify. Furthermore, Cave has been to see the Commander of Excise-your Benjamin Fisher’s brother, John-it is all in the family, as usual-and offered to make a sixteen-hundred-pound restitution. The Brothers Fisher are of course aware that you and Willy have been arrested and know perfectly well why Trevillian is doing this, but there is absolutely no proof.”

“So we are to be convicted felons disbarred from testifying.”

Willy began to howl like a dismal dog; Richard swung around with one of those lightning moves that defied sight and grasped his arm so hard that he squealed shrilly.

“Shut up, Willy! Shut up! Cry one more tear and irons or no, I will kick you to the other end of this establishment-and leave ye to die of fever!”

Dick gaped. Willy shut up.

Just as well, thought the stunned Dick, that Cousin James-the-druggist chose that moment to appear, lugging a wooden box the size of a small trunk. Otherwise, what was there to say to a stranger?

“A few things for you, Richard, but later,” the newcomer said, putting the box on the floor with a grunt. His eyes shone liquid with tears. “It looks worse and worse for you.”

“That comes as no surprise, Cousin James.”

“The Law is so peculiar, Richard! I confess I had no idea what it says or does beyond my own small part in the scheme of things, and I suppose that is true for everybody, especially the poor.” He held out his hand to Richard, who took it and found its grip convulsive. “You have almost no rights, especially outside the bounds of Bristol. Cousin Henry has tried and both the Reverend James and I have seen every important man we know, but the Law says that we cannot get a glimpse of Ceely’s sworn statement, nor even know the names of his witnesses. It is shocking, shocking! I had hoped to post bail, but bail is not granted for crimes ranked as felonies, and ye’re charged with”-he gulped, swallowed-“grand larceny and extortion! Both are capital crimes-Richard, ye could hang!”

“Well,” said Richard tiredly, “I brought it all upon myself, though ’twould be interesting to know what Ceely has sworn about extortion. He offered a wronged husband a note of hand as an out-of-court settlement. Or is he now saying I am not a husband and so extorted under false pretenses? If I call her my wife, then she is my wife under the Common Law unless I already have a wife, which I do not. That much I do know about the Law.”

“We have no idea what he has sworn,” said Dick hollowly.

“The first thing we must do is lay hands on Annemarie Latour. She can verify my story when I tell it in court.”

“Ye’re not allowed to testify on your own behalf, Richard,” said Cousin James-the-druggist quietly. “The accused is bound to silence, he is not allowed to tell his side of the story. All he may do in his defense is produce character witnesses and-if he can afford it-retain counsel to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses. His counsel cannot examine him, nor introduce any new evidence. As for the woman-she has disappeared. By rights she ought to be in the women’s section of the Newgate equally charged, but she is not. Her rooms in Clifton have been vacated, and no one seems to know whereabouts she went.”

“What a place is England, and how little we know of how it works until it touches us,” said Richard. “Am I not even allowed to have my counsel read out a sworn statement to the jury?”

“No. You may speak only in reply to a direct question from the judge, and then you must confine your answer entirely to it.”

“What about finding Annemarie through Mrs. Herbert Barton?”

“There is no Mrs. Herbert Barton.”

Willy Insell emitted a loud sob.

“Do not, Willy,” said Richard softly. “Just-do-not.”

“It is diabolical!” Dick cried, borrowing a Dissenter word.

“To sum up, then, we have no idea how Ceely is going to go about prosecuting me, nor who his witnesses are, nor what they will say,” said Richard levelly. “And all of it is going to take place in Gloucester, forty miles away.”

“That is the sum of it,” said Cousin James-the-druggist.

For as much as a minute Richard sat silent, chewing his lower lip, in thought rather than in anxiety. Then he shrugged. “That is for the future,” he said. “In the meantime I have urgent needs. Rags to pad my fetters. Rags for washing. And rags for wiping my arse.” His face contorted. “I will launder the last under the water pipe and use them damp if I have to. These poor creatures are too far gone to have much energy for stealing, but I doubt my rags would survive being hung up to dry. I will have to pay one of the gaolers to cut off my hair. I want soap. Changes of some clothing every few days-shirts, stockings, underdrawers. And clean rags, always clean rags. Plus money enough to drink small beer. That water over there comes out of the Pugsley’s Well pipe, I would bet, and will not be fit for drinking. So many in here are sick.” He drew a breath. “I know this means I will cost ye money, but I swear that the moment I am free, I will begin to pay it back.”

In answer, Cousin James-the-druggist opened up the wooden chest with the flair of a fairground conjurer. “I did think of rags already,” he said, burrowing. “If it is possible to keep custody of this box, do so. Sit on it, or be like Dick and tie it to your big toe. The gaoler inspected it minutely when I came in, of course.” He tittered. “No files or hacksaws, which is all he was worried about. Though it seems odd to me, ye’re allowed a razor and a pair of scissors. Perhaps the gaolers do not care if ye cut each other’s throats. A strop and a whetstone.” He lifted the scissors and handed them to Dick. “Start cutting, Cousin.”

“Cut Richard’s hair? I could not!” cried Dick, appalled.

“You must. Places like this are riddled with every kind of vermin. Short hair will not keep them entirely at bay, but at least it means far fewer. I have put in a fine-toothed comb as well, Richard. Trim your body hair too, or pluck it.”

“I have very little, so cutting it will suffice.”

Cousin James-the-druggist was still ferreting, trying to get his hands around something heavy and awkward. Finally he succeeded in dragging it out, and set it triumphantly on the flagging. “Is it not wondrous?” he demanded.

Richard, Dick and Willy stared at the object blankly.

“I am sure it is, Cousin James, but what is it?” asked Richard.

“A dripstone,” said Cousin James-the-druggist proudly. “The stone part, as you can see, is a slightly conical-bottomed dish which holds about three pints of water. The water soaks through the stone and drips from its bottom into the brass dish below it. Whatever magic happens within the stone I do not know, but the water in the collecting dish is as sweet and fresh as the best spring water. Which,” he explained, launched into one of his scientific enthusiasms, “is pure and sparkling because it too makes a journey through porous rocks! I had heard that the Italians-clever people!-have these dripstones, but I could not lay my hands on one. Then about a year ago my friend Captain John Staines came home from Brazilian parts with a cargo of cocoa beans for Joseph Fry and cochineal for me. He called into Teneriffe for water, which that isle has in abundance. Someone showed him this, thinking to interest him for an English market-it is at present exported to those parts of Spain where the water is terrible. Thus he gave it to me rather than to Fry, who cannot think beyond chocolate. I tested it on the water from the Pugsley’s Well pipe-as ye rightly said, Richard, undrinkable. Since the pipe is wooden and passes through four burying grounds, little wonder.”

“How did ye test it, Jim?” asked Dick with a long-suffering look, wincing as he snipped off Richard’s thick and curling hair.

“I drank the water the dripstone produced myself, naturally.”

“I knew ye’d say that.”

“I have begun to import dripstones from Teneriffe, and thought of you immediately,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, tucking the dripstone back into the box. “It will come in handy, Richard, though I warn ye that it does not last forever. My trial one became smelly and the water cloudy after nine months, but it is easy to see when the corruption begins because the inside of the stone bowl grows a sticky brown substance. However,” he went on, “the paper which came with my first shipment says that a dirty dripstone can be purified by soaking it for a week or two in clean sea-water and then drying it in the sun for another week or two.” He sighed. “Not possible in England, alas.”

“Cousin James,” said Richard, smiling with enormous affection, “I kiss your hands and feet.”

“No need to go that far, Richard.” He rose and dusted his hands together, then suffered a change of mood. “I brought the box today,” he said carefully, “because no one will tell me when ye’re likely to be moved to Gloucester. Since the next assizes are not due until Lent, it may not be soon. But it may be tomorrow. And James-of-the-clergy said to tell ye he will be visiting.”

“It will be a joy to see him,” said Richard, feeling light-headed. He rose while Dick, still squatting, scooped up his shorn hair. “Father, wash your hands in vinegar and oil of tar when you get home, and do not touch your face until you do. Bring me clean underdrawers and soap, I beg you!”

The move did not happen on the morrow. Richard and Willy remained in the Bristol Newgate until into the new year of 1785. A blessing in some ways-his family could see to his needs; a curse in others-his family witnessed the misery of his situation.

Determined to see Richard for herself, Mag came once. But after the horrors of finding him amid that horde of wraiths, one look at his face and bristling scalp saw her faint dead away.

That was not to be the worst. Cousin James-the-druggist came alone just after Christmas. “It is your father, Richard. He has had a stroke.”

The eyes Richard turned upon him had changed out of all recognition. Even through William Henry the tranquillity and flashes of humor had not completely vanished, but now they had. Life was not gone from them, but they observed rather than reacted. “Will he die, Cousin James?”

“No, not of this stroke. I have put him on a strict diet and hope to ensure that no second and third follow. His left arm and left leg are affected, but he can speak and his thought processes are not disordered. He sends all his love, but we feel that it is not wise for him to visit the Newgate.”

“Oh, the Cooper’s Arms! It will kill him to have to leave it.”

“There is no need for him to leave it. Your brother has sent his oldest boy to train as a victualler there-a good lad too, not so money-hungry as William. And pleased to be out of that household, I suspect. William’s wife is as hard as she is watchful-well, I do not need to tell ye that.”

“I daresay ’tis she has put her foot down and forbidden Will to visit me in gaol. He must be mourning the loss of his gratis saw-setter,” said Richard without rancor. “And Mum?”

“Mag is Mag. Her answer for everything is to work.”

Richard did not reply, just sat on the flags with his legs stretched out in front of him, Willy the shadow on his far side. Fighting tears, Cousin James-the-druggist tried to study him as if he were a stranger-not so difficult these days. How could he be so much handsomer than he used to be? Or was it that his handsomeness had gone unnoticed? The raggedly cropped trying-to-curl hair, no more than half an inch long, revealed the fine shape of the skull, and the sharp cheekbones and aquiline blade of nose stood forth in the smooth, unlined face. If that face had altered, then the change lay in his mouth; the sensuous lower lip remained, yet the whole had firmed and straightened, lost its dreamily peaceful contours. His thin, peaked black brows had always lain close to the eyes beneath, though now they looked-oh, more as if they belonged, as if they had been etched in as emphasis.

He is six-and-thirty, and God is trying him as He tried Job, but somehow Richard is turning the table on God without cheating or insulting Him. Over the course of the last year he has lost wife and only child-lost his fortune-lost his reputation-lost family like his selfish brother. Yet he has not lost himself. How little we know of those we think we know, in spite of a whole lifetime.

Richard suddenly smiled brilliantly, his eyes lighting. “Do not worry about me, Cousin James. Prison has not the power to ruin me. Prison is just something I have to live through.”

Possibly because few felons were transferred from Bristol to Gloucester, Richard and Willy received two days’ notice of their going, a bare week into January.

“You can take whatever ye can carry,” said Walter the chief gaoler when they were brought into his presence, “not a fleabite more. Ye’re not allowed a cart or barrow.”

He did not say whereabouts they were to start their journey, nor what kind of conveyance they would inhabit, and Richard did not ask. Willy-dying to ask-was too busy wincing at the pain of Richard’s foot on top of his.

The truth was that Walter was very sorry to see the end of Richard Morgan, who had brought him a very nice profit over the three months of his incarceration. His relatives fed both him and Insell, which meant that Walter had an extra tuppence a day; his father sent a gallon jug of good rum to his office once a week; and his cousin the fancy druggist regularly dropped a crown into Walter’s cupped hand. Had it not been for these gratuities, he would have deemed Richard Morgan a potentially violent madman and sent him to be locked up in St. Peter’s Hospital out of harm’s way until Gloucester demanded him. He really was mad!

Every day he washed his entire body with soap and freezing water from the pipe-he wiped his bum on a rag and then washed it-he hovered over the privy rather than sat on it-he kept his hair shorn-he never visited the taproom-he spent most of his time reading the books his cousin the rector of St. James’s brought him-and, maddest act of all, every day he filled a great thick stone basin with water from the pipe and drank what dripped out of it into a brass dish underneath. When Walter had demanded to know what he thought he was doing, he answered that he was turning water into wine as at the wedding feast. Mad! A March hare weren’t in it!

What the two days’ grace meant to Richard was a chance to make his stay in Gloucester Gaol more comfortable.

Cousin James-of-the-clergy brought him a new greatcoat. “As you see, your cousin Elizabeth”-who was his wife-“has sewn a thick lining of wool into your coat, Richard, and given ye two sorts of gloves. The leather ones have no fingertips, the knitted ones do. And I have packed the pockets of the greatcoat.”

No wonder it was so heavy. Both pockets contained books.

“I ordered them from London through Sendall’s,” Cousin James-of-the-clergy explained, “on the thinnest paper, and I tried not to visit you with too much religion. Just a Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.” He paused. “Bunyan is a Baptist, if that can be called a religion, but I think that Pilgrim’s Progress is a great book, so I put it in. And Milton.”

There were also a volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies, one of his comedies, and John Donne’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives.

Richard took the Reverend James’s hand and held it to his cheek, eyes closed. Seven books, none very big, so thin was the paper, so flexible the cloth binding. “Between the coat, the gloves, the Bible, Bunyan, Shakespeare and Plutarch, ye’ve managed to care for my body, my soul and my mind. I cannot thank you enough.”

Cousin James-the-druggist concentrated on Richard’s health. “A new stone for your drip apparatus, though do not change it until ye have to-it is just as well the stone is not much heavier than pumice, eh? Oil of tar and some new, very hard-wearing soap-ye go through soap too fast, Richard, too fast! Some of my special asphalt ointment-’twill heal anything from an ulcer to psoriasis. Ink and paper-I have wired the cork down so the bottle cannot leak. And do look at these, Richard!” he burbled, as always delighted out of a slough of despond by some new device. “They are called ‘nibs’ because they perform the same function as the tip of a trimmed quill, and they slide into the steel end of this wooden handle. I imported them from Italy, though they were made in Araby-geese are few and far between in Araby, it seems. Another razor, just in case. A big tin of malt for when ye do not get fruit or green vegetables-it prevents the scurvy. And rags, rags, rags. Between my wife and your mother, the drapers are out of sheets. A roll of lint and some styptic. And a bottle of my patented tonic, to which I have added a drachm of gold so that ye do not break out in boils. If ye get boils or carbuncles after ye’ve no tonic left, chew some lead shot for a few days. What is not padded with rags is padded with clothes.” Busy packing the chest, he frowned. “I fear ye’ll have to stuff some of it into your greatcoat pockets, Richard.”

“They are already full,” said Richard firmly. “The Reverend James brought me books, and I cannot leave them behind. If my mind fails, Cousin James, physical well-being is irrelevant. All that has kept me sane these past three months has been the chance to read. The worst horror of a prison is the idleness. The utter lack of anything to do. In Bunyan’s day-yes, I have Pilgrim’s Progress-a man could perform useful work and even sell what he made to support his wife and children, as Bunyan did for twelve long years. In here, the gaolers do not even like us to walk. Without books I would truly have gone mad. So I must keep them.”

“I understand.”

After much packing, unpacking and rearranging, the entire treasure trove was squeezed into the box. Only after Willy sat on its lid could its two stout locks be snapped shut; the key, on a thong, went around Richard’s neck. When he lifted the chest, he estimated that it weighed at least fifty pounds.

There was a box for Willy too, smaller and much lighter.

“The words have not been invented to tell ye of my gratitude,” Richard said, his eyes alive with the purest love.

“And I thank you,” said Willy, moved to tears despite Richard.

They parted then, to meet in Gloucester at the Lent assizes.

At dawn on the 6th of January, Richard and Willy picked up their boxes and shuffled through the barred gate into the passageway, where Walter waited with another individual, a stranger armed with a cudgel. They were thrust into the ironing room; for a fleeting moment Richard thought that they were to be divested of their irons for the journey, and breathed a sigh of relief. The box was heavy enough without the weight of fetters. But no. The sorry-looking fellow who ran this chamber of horrors took a two-inch-wide band of iron and locked it around Richard’s waist. His wrists were fitted with manacles, their two-foot chains attached to the lock at the front of his belly. After which the chain between his ankles was removed and replaced with two chains, one going from his left ankle to the lock on the belt, the other from his right ankle to the lock on the belt. He could walk with a normal stride, but never with sufficient agility to escape. Four lengths of chain met at the lock above his navel.

Somehow he managed to pick up his chest, and found with an odd surge of pleasure that the wrist chains formed a cradle for it, distributing the load between his arms and his trunk.

“Hold your box so, Willy,” he said to his shadow, “and it will bear better.”

“Hold your tongue!” barked Walter.

The piercing air outside felt and smelled like a distillation of Heaven. Nostrils and eyes dilated, Richard set out in front of their escort, who so far had not spoken a word. A Bristol bailiff?

How wondrous to be rid of that stinking dungeon! Gloucester, he knew, was a small town, therefore its gaol was bound to be more tolerable than the Bristol Newgate. Crime in rural areas was not unknown, but all the gazettes said that it was far greater in big cities. He could also comfort himself with the knowledge that he had more time in prison behind him than before him: the Gloucester Lent assizes were to be held in the latter part of March.

Oh, the air! Threatening snow, said the lowering black sky, but the only cold parts of him were his ears, unprotected now by hair. His hat shielded his scalp, but its upturned three-cornered brim could do nothing for his ears. Who cared? Eyes shining, he strode out down Narrow Wine Street, his chains jingling.

Though the hour was very early, Bristol was an early-rising sort of place; people were expected to be at work shortly after dawn, there to spend eight hours in winter, ten hours in spring and autumn, and twelve hours in summer. So as the three men walked, the two felons in front, there were plenty of people to see them. Faces would contort in terror, figures would plunge precipitously to the far side of the street-no one wanted to brush by a felon.

Wasborough’s brass foundry doors were wide open, its interior an inferno of flame and roar. The Royal Navy was getting the flat, hook-linked brass chains for its new bilge pumps, obviously; he had never walked up to see since losing his money.

“Dolphin Street,” said the bailiff curtly as they reached its corner. Not in the direction of the Cooper’s Arms, then, but north across the Froom. Well, that made sense. The Gloucester Turnpike ran north.

Which led to a new thought: who was paying for all this? He and Willy were being extradited from one county to another, and the importing county was the one had to pay. Were he and Willy so significant to Gloucestershire, then, that it was willing to disburse several pounds on forty miles of travel and the cost of their bailiff escort? Or was it Ceely paying? Yes, of course it was Ceely paying. With pleasure, Richard imagined.

From Dolphin Street it was left into Broadmead and the wagon yard of Michael Henshaw, who operated freight wagons to Gloucester, Monmouth and Wales, Oxford, Birmingham, and even Liverpool. There they were shoved into an alcove full of horse dung and allowed to put their boxes down, Willy gasping in distress.

At least, thought Richard, three months of inertia have not stripped me of all my strength. Poor Willy is not strong, is all. But three months more will see me reduced to Willy’s plight unless Gloucester Gaol offers me the opportunity to work and feeds me enough to work on. But if I do work, who will guard my box, keep thieving hands out of it? I will not lose things like my oil of tar and dripstone, but my rags and clothes will vanish in a second and someone might find the hollow compartment holding my golden guineas. My books might go! For certainly I am not the only prisoner in England who reads books.

The huge wagon Willy and Richard climbed into was provided with a canvas cover stretched taut across iron half-hoops; they would be protected from the worst of the elements, including what looked like a coming snow-storm bound to be more severe away from the heat of Bristol’s chimneys. A team of eight big horses were harnessed to the wagon, and looked fit to struggle through the mud and mire of the Gloucester Turnpike. The interior was jammed with so many barrels and crates that there was nowhere to put their feet, and the wagoneer began to insist that their boxes stay behind.

“They has their property, man, that is the Law,” said the bailiff in a tone brooking no argument. He climbed into the wagon to unlock the chains between their ankles and waists, fastening them instead to the half-hoops supporting the canvas shroud. The best they could do was dispose themselves among the cargo with legs stretched out. The bailiff jumped down, and for a moment Richard wondered if he was leaving them here. The wagon jerked into motion; the bailiff’s back was ranged alongside the wagoneer’s on the driver’s seat, over which an adequate shelter was rigged.

“Willy, stir yourself,” said Richard to his doleful companion, clearly dying to burst into tears. “Help me shift my box to rest against this sack, then I will do the same for you. We will have something to lean against. And do not cry! Cry, and ye’re dead.”

The pace was tormentingly slow on that completely plastic, unpaved road, and from time to time the wagon bogged to its axles in mud. Richard and Willy would be unchained and unloaded and set to digging and pushing-as was, Richard noted with amusement, the indignant bailiff. The snow was coming down hard, but the temperature was not low enough to freeze the surface. By the end of the first day, unfed and unwatered save by mouthfuls of snow, they had covered eight of the forty miles.

Which pleased the wagoneer, disembarking in front of the Stars and Plough in Almondsbury.

“I owe ye a bed and blankets,” he said to the prisoners with a great deal more good humor than he had displayed in Bristol. “ ’Twere your efforts got us out of the muck half a dozen times. And as for you, Tom, ye deserve a quart of ale-’tis good here, the landlord makes his own brew.”

He and Tom the bailiff disappeared, leaving Richard and Willy inside the wagon wondering what happened now. Then Tom the bailiff came to unlock the chains binding them to the hoops, cudgel at the ready, and conducted them to a stone barn wherein lay straw. He found a beam with several iron staples in it close to the floor, and locked them to that. After which he vanished.

“I am so hungry!” whimpered Willy.

“Ye may pray, Willy, but do not cry.”

The barn smelled clean and the straw was dry, a better nest than any which had come Richard’s way for three months, he thought, burrowing around. In the midst of this, the landlord and a hefty yokel walked in, the landlord bearing a tray upon which reposed two tankards, bread, butter, and two big bowls of steaming soup. The yokel went to an empty stall and reappeared with horse blankets.

“John says ye helped the wagon considerable,” said Mine Host, putting down his tray where they could reach it and then stepping backward quickly. “Have ye money to pay more than the penny each the bailiff will for ye? Otherwise I am out of pocket and must charge John’s firm, since he says ye’ve earned laborer’s wages.”

“How much?” Richard asked.

“Threepence each, including the quarts of ale.”

Richard produced a sixpence from his waistcoat pocket.

Three pence got them bread and small beer at dawn, then it was back into the wagon for a second day of eight miles, broken by much digging, pushing and heaving. A blissful night’s rest amid straw and blankets combined with the nourishing hot food had worked wonders for Richard’s frame, ache though it did from his exertions. Even Willy was more cheerful, put more heart into the work. It had ceased to snow and snapped colder, though never cold enough to freeze the ground; eight miles in one day were as many as they could go, a progress which perfectly satisfied John the wagoneer-and probably enabled him to put up each night at his regular stop.

Thus Richard expected to be deposited at Gloucester Gaol on the evening of the fifth day. The wagon, however, ceased to roll when it reached the Harvest Moon on Gloucester’s outskirts.

“I am not of a mind to put ye into that foul place in the dark,” John the wagoneer explained. “Ye have paid your way like gentlemen, and I feel sorry for ye, very. This will be your last night of decent rest and decent food for only God can say how long. ’Tis hard to think of ye as felons, so good luck, both of ye.”

At dawn the next day the wagon crossed the Severn River on the drawbridge and entered the town of Gloucester through its west gate. In many ways it was still medieval, had retained most of its walls, ditches, drawbridges and cloisters, half-timbered houses. His view of the town was limited to what he could see through the uncovered back of the wagon, but that was sufficient to tell him that Gloucester was a minnow to Bristol’s whale.

The wagon drew up to a gate in a heavy, ancient wall; Richard and Willy were unloaded and conducted, together with Tom the bailiff, into a large open space which seemed given over to the cultivation of plants only spring would name. In front of them was Gloucester Castle, which was also Gloucester Gaol. A place of frowning stone turrets, towers and barred windows, yet more of a ruin than a fortress last defended in the time of Oliver Cromwell. They did not enter it, but went instead to a fairly large stone house set against the outer wall and ditch surrounding the castle. Here lived the head gaoler.

The real reason they had been escorted from Bristol, Richard decided here, lay more in the fact that the Bristol Newgate wanted its irons back than cared about escaping prisoners. They were divested of every piece of iron they wore, Tom the bailiff gathering them to himself like a woman her new baby. As soon as all were accounted and signed for, he strolled off with his cargo in a sack to catch the cheap coach home. Leaving Richard and Willy to be put into fresh sets of the familiar locked fetters with a two-foot length of chain between. This deed done, a gaoler-they never saw the head gaoler himself-hustled them, carrying their precious boxes, to the castle.

What little of it was still habitable was such a crush of prisoners that sitting down with the legs stretched out was quite impossible. If these wretches sat, it was with knees drawn up beneath their chins. The chamber was exactly twelve feet square and contained around thirty men and ten women. The gaoler who had escorted them bawled an incomprehensible order and everybody who had managed to find enough space to sit got to their feet. They then filed outside, Richard and a weeping Willy in their midst, still carrying their boxes, and came to a halt in a freezing yard where twenty more men and women already stood.

It was Sunday, and the complement of Gloucester Gaol were to receive God’s message from the Reverend Mr. Evans, a gentleman so old that his reedy voice drifted into the winds eddying around the roughly rectangular space and rendered his words of repentance, hope and piety-if such they were-unintelligible. Luckily he considered that a ten-minute service and another twenty minutes spent sermonizing constituted adequate labor for the £40 per annum he was paid as prison chaplain, especially because he also had to do this on Wednesdays and Fridays.

After, they were herded back to the felons’ common-room, far smaller than that for debtors, of whom there were only half as many.

“It ain’t as bad as this Monday to Saturday,” said a voice as Richard put his box down by shoving someone else out of the way, and sat on it. “What a lovely man ye are!”

She squatted at his feet, elbowing those on either side of her roughly, a thin and stringy creature of about thirty years, clad in much-mended but reasonably clean clothes-black skirt, red petticoat, red blouse, black jerkin and an oddly cheeky black hat which sat with its wide brim to one side and bore a goose feather dyed scarlet.

“Is there no chapel where the parson can make his sermon heard?” Richard asked with a slight smile; there was something very likable about her, and talking to her meant he did not have to listen to Weeping Willy.

“Oh, aye, but it ain’t big enough for all of us. We are real full at the moment-need a decent dose of gaol fever to cut the numbers back. Name is Lizzie Lock.” And she thrust out a hand.

He shook it. “Richard Morgan. This is Willy Insell, who is the bane of my life as well as my shadow.”

“How de do, Willy?”

Willy’s answer was a fresh spate of tears.

“He is a water fountain,” said Richard tiredly, “and one day I am going to strangle him.” He gazed about. “Why are there women in with the men?”

“No separate gaol, Richard my love. No separate gaol for the debtors either, which is why we got a mention in John Howard’s report on England’s Bridewells about five year ago. And that is why we are abuilding of a new gaol. And that is why we ain’t so crowded Monday to Saturday, when the men are abuilding,” she said, rattling it off.

He picked one fact out of this. “Who is John Howard?”

“Fellow wrote this report on the Bridewells, I already told ye that,” said Lizzie Lock. “Do not ask me more for I do not know no more. Would not know that except it set Gloucester by the ears-the Bishop and his grand College and the beadles. So they got a Act of Parliament to build a new gaol. Supposed to be finished in another three years, but I will not be here to see it.”

“Expecting to be released?” asked Richard, whose smile was growing. He liked her, though he was not attracted to her in the slightest; just that her beady black eyes had not given up on life.

“Lord bless ye, no!” she said with great good cheer. “I went down for the sus. per coll. two year ago.”

“The what?”

“Hangman’s rope, Richard my love. Sus. per coll., which is what the gent who swings ye writes in his official book as soon as ye’ve stopped kicking. In London, ’tis called the nubbing cheat.”

“But you are still alive, I see.”

“Got reprieved Christmas before last. Transportation for seven years. So far, ain’t been transported nowhere, but ’tis bound to happen.”

“From what I hear, Lizzie, there is nowhere to transport you. Though there was talk about Africa in Bristol.”

“Ye’re a Bristol man! Thought so. Ye’ve a twang, not a burr.”

“Willy and I are both Bristol men. We came in today by wagon.”

“And ye’re a gentleman,” she said, tone wondering.

“Of sorts only, Lizzie.”

She poked a finger at the wooden box. “What is in there?”

“My belongings, though for how long is difficult to say. I note that some of these folk look sick, but most look a lot spryer than anyone in the Bristol Newgate.”

“Because of the new goal abuilding, and Old Mother Hubbard’s vegetable patches. Those who work get fed proper. ’Tis cheaper to use the prisoners than hire Gloucester laborers-something to do with a Act of Parliament letting prisoners labor. Us women got jobs too, mostly gardening.”

“Old Mother Hubbard?”

“Hubbard the head gaoler. Important thing is not to sicken-quarter rations if ye do. Gaol fever runs riot here. Lost eight to the smallpox over Christmas of eighty-three.” She patted the wooden box. “Do not fret about it, Richard my love. I will look after it-for a consideration.”

“What consideration?” he asked warily.

“Protection. I earn full rations by darning and mending, and a few pence too. Ye might say I rent my services in a mode the parson do not disapprove of. But the men are always after me, especially that Isaac Rogers.” She pointed to a big, burly fellow who looked a genuine villain. “A bad lot, that one!”

“What did he do?”

“Highway robbery. Brandy and chests of tea.”

“And what did you do?”

She giggled and flicked her hat. “I pinched the most wondrous silk hat! I cannot help myself, Richard-I love hats!”

“Do you mean they sentenced you to death for stealing a hat?”

The black eyes twinkled; she hung her head. “ ’Twas not my first offense,” she said. “I told ye, I love hats.”

“Enough to swing for, Lizzie?”

“Well, I did not think of that when I pinched ’em, did I?”

He held out his hand to Lizzie for the second time. “Ye’ve a bargain, my girl. Consider yourself under my protection, in return for which I expect you to guard my box with your life. And do not try to pick its locks, Lizzie Lock! There are no hats inside, I swear.” He got to his feet by shoving people aside. “If I can move through the crowd, I intend to explore the full extent of my new domain. Mind my box.”

Fifteen minutes were enough to complete the tour. A number of small cells led off the common-room, unlit, unventilated and unpopulated, though two of them held privies. A set of crumbling stairs led to regions aloft, barred by a gate. The debtors’ common-room, also barred from the felons by a gate, was ten by twenty feet, but, like the cells, it contained no kind of window or vent and would have lain in stygian darkness were it not that its inmates had broken down a section of wall at its top to admit light and air. The yard lay beyond that. Though they had more space, the debtors’ lot was more invidious than that of the felons’; they did not work, and so subsisted on quarter rations. Like the inmates of the Bristol Newgate, they were emaciated, partially clothed in rags, and apathetic.

He returned to the felons’ common-room to find Lizzie Lock vigorously defending his box from Isaac Rogers the highwayman.

“Leave her and my belongings alone,” said Richard curtly.

“Make me!” said Rogers with a snarl, shaping up.

“Oh, piss off, do! Ye’re a tub of lard I would eat at one sitting,” said Richard, his tone as weary as it was unintimidated. “Just go away! I am a peaceful man by name of Richard Morgan, and this lady is under my protection.” He put his arm about Lizzie’s waist while she shrank against him gleefully. “There are other women here. Bother one of them.”

Rogers weighed him carefully and decided discretion was the better part of valor. Had Morgan betrayed a trace of fear it would have gone differently, but the bugger had no fear in him. Too calm, too contained. Fellows like that fought like cats, teeth and nails and boots, and they were agile. So he slouched away with a shrug, leaving Richard to sit on his box and perch Lizzie on his knee.

“When do they feed us?” he asked. What a clever female she was! No fear that she would misinterpret his gallantry. It suited Lizzie Lock to have a protector who did not desire her.

“Soon for dinner,” she answered. “It being Sunday, we get new bread, meat, a hunk of cheese, turnips and cabbage. No butter or jam, but there is plenty to eat. Felons got their own kitchen, through there”-she pointed to the far end of the room-“and Cook will issue ye with a wooden trencher and a tin mug. Supper is more bread, small beer and cabbage soup.”

“Is there a taproom?”

“What, in here? Fond of the booze, are ye, Richard my love?”

“No. I drink naught but small beer or water. I wondered.”

“Simmons-his nickname is Happy and he is an under-gaoler-will bring booze in for ye for a penny profit. That is when ye’ll have to watch yon Isaac. He is savage in his cups, is Ike.”

“Drunk men are clumsy, I have dealt with them all my life.”

By the end of February there was nothing that Richard did not know about Gloucester Gaol, including all its felon inmates, whom proximity rendered intimates rather than acquaintances. Fourteen of them were up for trial at the Lent assizes; the rest were already judged and sentenced, mostly to transportation. And of those fourteen, three were women-Mary (known as Maisie) Harding, charged with receiving stolen goods-Betty Mason, charged with stealing a purse containing fifteen guineas from a house in Henbury-and Bess Parker, charged with housebreaking in North Nibley and the theft of two linen garments. Bess Parker had formed a firm relationship with a 1783 felon, Ned Pugh; Betty Mason had bewitched an under-gaoler named Johnny. Both were due to have babies at any moment.

What a fine little world is ours! Richard reflected wryly. A common-room one can hardly stand up in, and, when a gaoler opens the gate, a disgusting men’s dormitory up the steps. He had become quite case-hardened; stripped and bathed at the pump in an airless black cell without regard for the women, washed his bum rags under it with calm unimpaired, and filtered his drinking water through his dripstone under the gaze of more than three dozen pairs of incredulous eyes. A degree of selfishness had crept into him, for he made no attempt to share his purified water with either Lizzie or Willy; the dripstone was slow, taking an hour to produce two pints of filtered water. Nor did he share his soap or rags. What few pence he disbursed from his hoard went to Maisie, the laundress, for washing his underdrawers, shirts and stockings; as for breeches and other outer wear-well, they simply stank of sweat.

Maisie was the only one of the women without a protector and dispensed her favors gratis, whereas two or three of the others could be had for a mug of gin. When the urge visited a couple, they lay down on whatever vacant piece of floor they could find, or, failing that, stood against the wall. Not an erotic business, as clothes stayed on and the most a curious individual could see was a glimpse of a fleshy pole or hairy mound, though usually not even that. What fascinated Richard most was that none of the copulating happened in one of the adjacent cells; everybody seemed terrified of the dark.

Bess Parker and Betty Mason broke their waters on the felons’ common-room floor early in March and were carried off to the female dormitory to finish the birthing process in that foul place. Two other women were nursing babies born in Gloucester Gaol, and Maisie had a toddler she had brought into gaol with her. Most of the babes died at or soon after birth. Toddlers were a miracle.

But there was plenty of work to do, a blessing. Richard was put to carrying limestone blocks from the castle dock to the new prison, which gave him both fresh air and a chance to look around. Gloucester’s tiny port was just north of the castle precinct on the same bank of the Severn, which was navigable to this point for small snows and large barges. One of the town’s two foundries made church bells, whereas the other contented itself with small iron items readily sold in the neighborhood. They gave out smoke, but not nearly enough to foul the air, which Richard found sweet and crisp. Nor did the Severn look fouled, though the endemic gaol fever indicated that the gaol’s water source was contaminated. Or else it was spread by the fleas and lice, which Richard dealt with by scrubbing his filthy pallet with oil of tar and keeping himself and his clothes picked over constantly. Oh, God, to be clean! To live clean! To have a meed of privacy!

The gaol fever broke out scant days after Richard and Willy were admitted, which brought the population of the common-room down from forty to twenty; only a small influx of new faces kept the number due to be tried at fourteen.

Time and shared work had introduced him to all the men, some of whom he found himself able to like well enough to call them friends: William Whiting, James Price and Joseph Long. They were all on the Lent assizes list with him.

Whiting stood accused of stealing a wether sheep at the same place had harbored Richard and Willy amid the straw of the Stars and Plough, Almondsbury.

“Absolute rubbish!” said Whiting, who was a regular wag. No one was quite sure if what he said could be taken seriously. “Why on earth would I steal a sheep? All I wanted to do was fuck it. Would’ve had it back in its pen the next morning and no one the wiser. Except that the shepherd was not asleep.”

“Desperate, Bill?” asked Richard without cracking a smile.

“Not so much desperate as-well, I plain like fucking, and a sheep’s arse feels much the same as a woman’s quim,” said Whiting chirpily. “Smells the same, at any rate, and ’tis a bit tighter. Besides, sheep don’t answer back. See, ye stick its back legs in the tops of your boots and away ye go.”

“Whether it is bestiality or sheep stealing, Bill, ye’re up for the rope. But why Almondsbury? Another eight miles and ye could have found a thousand whores of either sex in Bristol-they do not answer back either.”

“Could not wait, just could not wait. Had the loveliest face-reminded me of a parson I once knew.”

Richard gave up.

Jimmy Price was a Somerset yokel with a poor head for rum. He and a companion had robbed three houses in Westbury-upon-Trim and stolen a large quantity of beef, pork and mutton, three hats, two coats, an embroidered waistcoat, riding boots, a musket and two green silk umbrellas. His confederate, whom he called Peter, had since perished of the gaol fever. He was unrepentant because he considered his conduct blameless. “Didn’t mean to do it-don’t remember doing it,” he explained. “What would I need with two green silk umbrellas? Ain’t nowhere to sell them in Westbury. Wasn’t hungry neither, and none of the clothes fit me or Peter. And never took no powder or shot for the musket.”

The third of the trio, whom Richard pitied deeply, was far sadder. Weak-willed, weak-witted, Joey Long had stolen a silver watch in Slimbridge. “I were drunk,” he said simply, “and it were so pretty.”

Of course Richard had answered the same sort of questions; the felons’ common-room was a kind of Grand Larceny Club. His explanation was always brief: “Extortion and grand larceny. A note of hand for five hundred pounds and a steel watch.” A reply which earned him much respect, even from Isaac Rogers.

“A useful term, grand larceny,” he said to Bill Whiting as they lugged limestone blocks; Whiting was literate and intelligent. “For me, a steel watch. For poor Bess Parker, a couple of workaday linen shifts worth sixpence, if that. For Rogers, four gallons of brandy and forty-five hundred-weight of best hyson tea at a pound a pound retail. Over five thousand in plunder. Yet we are all charged with grand larceny. It is senseless.”

“Rogers will dance,” was Whiting’s comment.

“Lizzie got the sus. per coll. for stealing three hats.”

“Repeated offenses, Richard,” said Whiting with a laugh. “She was supposed to reform her ways and never do it again. The trouble is that we are most of us drunk at the time. Blame the booze.”

The two Cousins James arrived in Gloucester by hired post chaise on Monday, the 21st of March. As they could find no decent accommodation in the town itself, they ended in putting up at the Harvest Moon, in the barn of which Richard and Willy had spent their last night before entering Gloucester Gaol.

Like Richard, they had confidently expected to find the new prison more bearable by far than the old. Besides, they had not imagined that any prison could be worse than the Bristol Newgate.

“It is pretty fair at the moment, Cousin James, Cousin James,” said Richard, surprised at their horror when conducted into the felons’ common-room. “The gaol fever has cleared it out greatly.” He had pecked each of them on the mouth, but would not let them enfold him in hugs. “I stink,” he said.

A table and benches had suddenly appeared after the Sunday service; warned that the Parliament was paying severe attention to John Howard’s report on debtors’ prisons and that in consequence the Baron Eyre might ask to inspect his premises, the head gaoler had responded by doing what he could.

“How is Father?” was Richard’s first question.

“Not well enough to make the journey, but better all the same. He sends his love,” said Cousin James-the-druggist. “And prayers.”

“Mum?”

“Herself. She sends her love and prayers too.”

The Cousins James were amazed at how well Richard looked. His coat, waistcoat and breeches were very smelly and shabby, but his shirt and stockings were clean, as were the rags padding his ankle irons. The hair was cropped as short as it had been in the Newgate and showed no sprinkling of grey; his nails were clean and well trimmed, his face freshly shaven; and his skin showed not a single line. The eyes were remote and stern, a little terrifying.

“Is there any news of William Henry?”

“No, Richard, not a peep.”

“Then all this does not matter.”

“Of course it does!” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy strongly. “We have engaged counsel for you-not a Bristol man, alas. These county assize courts do not welcome foreigners. Cousin Henry-the-lawyer instructed us to seek out a proper Gloucester assizes man. There are two judges, one a Baron of the superior court of the Royal Exchequer-that is Sir James Eyre-and the other a Baron of the superior court of Common Law-that is Sir George Nares.”

“Have you seen Ceely Trevillian?”

“No,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, “but I am told he is lodging at the best inn in town. This is a big event for Gloucester-conducted with great ceremony, I hear, at least on the morrow, when everybody parades through the town to the city hall, which is also the court house. The two judges stay in special lodgings nearby, but most of their serjeants, barristers and clerks put up at inns. Tomorrow the Grand Jury sits, but it is merely custom. Ye’ll all go to trial, so your attorney says.”

“Who is he?”

“Mr. James Hyde, of Chancery Lane, London. He is a barrister who travels the Oxford circuit with Barons Eyre and Nares.”

“When is he coming to see me?”

“He will not do that, Richard. His duties are in the court. Do not forget that he cannot present your side of the story. He listens to the witnesses and tries to find a chink in their testimony for cross-examination. As he does not know who the witnesses are nor what they will say, it is useless his seeing you. We have briefed him very adequately. He is very down-to-earth and able.”

“What is his fee for so much work?”

“Twenty guineas.”

“And ye’ve paid him already?”

“Aye.”

It is a travesty, thought Richard, producing a warm smile and squeezing the arm to either side of him. “You are so very good to me. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”

“You are family, Richard,” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy, sounding surprised.

“I have brought you a new suit and a new pair of shoes,” the apothecary James announced. “And a wig. Ye cannot go into court crop-skulled. The women-your mother, Ann and Elizabeth-have sent ye a whole box of underdrawers, shirts, stockings and rags.”

To which Richard made no reply; his family had prepared for the worst, not the best. For if the day after tomorrow were to see him set free, why did he need a whole box of new clothes?

The sounds of Gloucester celebrating the beginning of its assizes came clearly to Richard’s ears the next day as he lumped his blocks-the blare of trumpets and horns, the roll of drums, cheers and oohs of admiration, music from a band of drums and fifes, the sonorous singsong of voices orating in fluent Latin. The mood of Gloucester was festive.

The mood within the prison was dour. No one, Richard realized when he looked at his sixteen fellow accused (the tally had risen again), truly expected any verdict other than “guilty.” Two others could afford counsel: Bill Whiting and Isaac Rogers. Mr. James Hyde was their man too, which led Richard to assume that Mr. Hyde was the only candidate.

“Do none of us hope to get off?” Richard asked Lizzie.

Veteran of three trials in these same assizes, Lizzie looked blank. “We do not get off, Richard,” she said simply. “How can we? The evidence is given by the prosecutor and witnesses, and the jury believes what it hears. Almost all of us are guilty, though I have known several who were the victims of lies. It is no excuse to be drunk, and if we had friends in high places, we would not be in Gloucester Gaol.”

“Is anyone ever acquitted?”

“Perhaps one, if the assizes are big enough.” She sat on his knee and smoothed his hair much as she would have a child’s. “Do not get your hopes up, Richard my love. Being in the dock is all the damnation the jury needs. Just wear your wig, please.”

When Richard shuffled off at dawn on the 23rd of March, hands in manacles and everything chained to his waist, he wore his new suit, a very plain affair of black coat, black waistcoat and black breeches, with his new black shoes on his feet and clean padding on his wrists and ankles. But he was not wearing the wig; the feel of the thing was too horrible. Seven others went with him: Willy Insell, Betty Mason, Bess Parker, Jimmy Price, Joey Long, Bill Whiting and Sam Day, a seventeen-year-old from Dursley charged with stealing two pounds of yarn from a weaver.

They were ushered into the city hall through a back door and hustled down some stairs to the cellars without gaining a glimpse of the arena in which combat was verbal but death possible just the same.

“How long does it take?” Bess Parker whispered to Richard, eyes big with apprehension; she had lost her child of the gaol fever two days after he was born, and it was a grief to her.

“Not long, is my guess. The court will not sit for more than six hours in a day, if that, yet there are eight of us waiting to be tried. It must happen like a butcher turning out sausages.”

“Oh, I am so frightened!” cried Betty Mason, whose girl-child had been born dead. A grief to her.

Jimmy Price was taken away first, but had not returned when Bess Parker’s turn came; only after Betty Mason had gone did those remaining in the cell realize that once a prisoner’s hearing had concluded, the prisoner apparently went straight back to the gaol.

Sam Day was marched off, leaving Richard and Willy in the cell with Joey Long and Bill Whiting. Several hours went by.

“Dinner time for their lordships,” said the irrepressible Whiting. He licked his lips. “Roast goose, roast beef, roast mutton, flummeries and flans and flawns, pastries and puddens and pies-it looks well for us, Richard! Their lordships’ bellies will be full and their wits fuddled with claret and port.”

“I think that bodes ill,” said Richard, in no mood for jollity. “Their gout will play up, so will their guts.”

“What a Job’s comforter ye are!”

He and Willy were last of all, taken upstairs at half past three by the timepiece on the wall of the court room. The well from the bowels of the hall opened directly into the dock, where he and Willy stood (it had no seats) blinking at the brightness. A javelin man kept them company, his regalia medieval and his pose lethargic. Though the room was not enormous, it did have audience galleries on high; those on its floor all apparently had a role to play in the drama. The two justices sat on a tall dais clad in all the majesty of fur-trimmed crimson robes and full-bottomed wigs. Other court officials sat around and below them, while yet others moved about-which one was his counsel, Mr. James Hyde? Richard had no idea. The jury of twelve men stood in what looked a little like a sheepfold, easing their sore feet by surreptitiously stepping. Richard was aware of their plight, which figured large in every Free Man’s resentment of jury duty from the Tweed to the Channel: no sitting down on the job and no compensation for the loss of a day’s wages. Which encouraged the jury to get its business over and done with as quickly as the judge could say “Gallows!”

Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian was sitting in the company of a formidable-looking man clothed in the garb of a participant in the drama-robe, tie-back wig, buckles, badges. A different Ceely than any Richard had so far seen; this Ceely was soberly clad in the finest black cloth from head to foot, wore a conservative wig, black kid gloves and the mien of an amiable idiot. Of the mincing laughingstock or the brisk excise defrauder, no sign whatsoever. The Ceely who sat in Gloucester’s city hall was the quintessential dupe. Upon Richard’s entry into the dock he had emitted a shrill little squeak of terror and shrunk against his companion, after which he looked anywhere but in the direction of the dock. At law, Ceely himself was the prosecutor, but his counsel did the work, addressing the jury to tell it of the heinous crime the two felons in the dock had committed; Richard put his manacled hands on the railing, set his feet firmly on the ancient board floor, and listened as the prosecutor extolled the virtues-and idiocies-of this poor harmless person, Mr. Trevillian. There would be, he understood, no miracles in Gloucester today.

Ceely told his story amid sobs, gulps and long pauses to find words, rolling his eyes in his head, sometimes covering his face with his ungloved hands, agitated, trembling, twitching. At the end of it, the jury, impressed by his mental impoverishment and his material prosperity, clearly deemed him the victim of a lewd woman and her irate husband. Which in itself did not necessarily indicate that a deliberate felony had occurred, nor that the note of hand for £500, though extricated by force, was true extortion.

The job of establishing that fell to two witnesses, Joice the hairdresser’s wife, who listened through her wall, and Mr. Dangerfield in the other house, who saw through his wall. Mrs. Joice’s hearing was superlative, and Mr. Dangerfield was able to see a 360° world through a quarter-inch crack. One heard phrases like “Damned bitch! Where is your candle?” and “I will blow your brains out, you damned rascal!”, while the other saw Morgan and Insell threatening Ceely with a hammer and forcing him to write at a desk.

Mr. James Hyde, acting for Richard, turned out to be a tall, thin man who looked much like a raven. He cross-examined well, it seemed with the object of establishing that the three houses near Jacob’s Well contained a nest of gossips who had actually heard and seen extremely little and constructed their stories upon what Ceely had said to them in the lane afterward-followed by the Dangerfields’ sheltering him in their house with Mrs. Joice in attendance.

On one point Ceely could make little headway: the witnesses both testified that Richard had shouted through the door that Mr. Trevillian could have his watch back after Richard had obtained satisfaction. That sounded very much like a wronged husband, even to the jury.

It is ridiculous! thought Richard as the testimony went on and that trip to the Black Horse to fetch liquid refreshments was shifted to the following day. If Willy and I could speak for ourselves, we could establish easily that at the time we were both in the Lamb Inn courtyard. There is only one coach to Bath and it goes at noon and I was supposed to be in Bath, even Ceely says that. Yet they all say I was in Clifton!

During Mrs. Joice’s testimony it came out that she had overheard Richard and Annemarie plotting Annemarie’s assignation with Ceely in their hall-as if, thought Richard, anyone with criminal intent would choose to have such a conversation right next to a thin partition! But the very mention of the word “plot” caused both judge and jury to stiffen.

Mrs. Mary Meredith testified that she had seen the two men in the dock and a woman near Jacob’s Well as she was returning home about eight o’clock in the evening, and recounted hearing talk between them about a watch and Ceely’s having to go to law to get it back. Amazing! At eight o’clock at the end of September no one could have seen facial features farther away than a yard, as Mr. Hyde reminded Mrs. Meredith, much to her confusion.

A faint ray of hope began to suffuse Richard’s gloom; no matter how hard the prosecution tried, the jury still had not made up its mind whether what had happened was deliberate or the result of anger at being cuckolded.

Cousin James-the-druggist and Cousin James-of-the-clergy were called as character witnesses on Richard’s behalf; though the prosecutor made much of their close relationship to the accused, there could be no doubt that two such pillars of probity made a profound impression on the jury. The trouble was that this case, thanks to a defending counsel, was dragging out toward an hour in length, and the jurymen were dying to get off their feet. No one wanted a long case at the end of the day, including the judges.

Mr. James Hyde called Robert Jones as a character witness.

Richard jumped. Robert Jones testifying on his behalf? The smarmer who sucked up to William Thorne and had told Thorne of Willy’s visit to the Excise?

“Do you know the accused, Mr. Jones?” Mr. Hyde asked.

“Oh, aye, both of them.”

“Are they decent, law-abiding men, Mr. Jones?”

“Oh, aye, very.”

“Have they, to your knowledge, ever run foul of the Law?”

“Oh, nay, never.”

“Are ye privy to any information-apart from the general gossip which seems rife there-about the events at Jacob’s Well on the thirtieth of September last?”

“Oh, aye, that I am, sir.”

“To what effect?”

“Eh?”

“What do you know, Mr. Jones?”

“Well, to start with, Mrs. Joice ain’t no missus. She is just a whore who moved in with Mr. Joice.”

“Mrs. Joice is not on trial, Mr. Jones. Confine yourself to the events.”

“I talked to her and to Mr. Dangerfield. Mr. Dangerfield took me to the place upstairs in his house where he saw through, but he said he could not hear nothing, and what he saw was mighty little. Mrs. Joice said she did not hear nor see a thing.”

The prosecuting attorney was frowning; Mr. Trevillian, the real prosecutor, sat looking as if this were all far too much for his sadly limited understanding.

The prosecutor’s attorney elected to cross-examine.

“When did this conversation with Mrs. Joice and Mr. Dangerfield occur, Mr. Jones? Please be explicit.”

“Eh?”

“Absolutely clear.”

“Oh, aye. Happened the next day when I went to see Willy-Mr. Insell the accused, that is-at Jacob’s Well. Heard the story from him and asked the neighbors what they had seen and heard. Mrs. Joice-who ain’t a missus!-said she did not hear or see nothing. Mr. Dangerfield showed me the place he saw from, but when I looked, I could not see nothing.”

Mrs. Joice was recalled, and explained that naturally she had denied seeing or hearing anything next door-she was not the sort of woman to encourage snoopers!

Mr. Dangerfield was recalled, and repeated that he had never said he could hear, only see.

“Call Mr. James Hyde!” said the prosecuting attorney loudly. Richard’s counsel jumped, looked startled. “Not you, my learned colleague. Mr. James Hyde, servant to Mr. Trevillian’s mother.”

This James Hyde was a small, sandy man in his fifties with the unobtrusive and faintly obsequious air of a senior house servant. He stated that Mr. Dangerfield had come to see him on the first of October and informed him that a Robert Jones had told him that for the sum of five guineas, he could prove that Morgan had plotted with his wife to rob Mr. Trevillian.

The jury stirred and muttered, Sir James Eyre the judge sat up straighter.

“A plot, Mr. Hyde?”

“Yes, sir, a plot.”

“Did it involve Mr. Insell too?”

“Mr. Dangerfield did not say it did. Morgan and Mrs. Morgan.”

Recalled, Mr. Dangerfield admitted that he had gone to Mrs. Maurice Trevillian’s house to see his friend Mr. James Hyde and told Hyde of Robert Jones’s offer.

On re-examination, Mr. Robert Jones said that all of this was true. He knew Mr. Dangerfield was friendly with the Trevillian household, and he was a bit short of money, so…

“What of this plot between Morgan and his wife to rob Mr. Trevillian? Did it exist?” asked the prosecuting attorney.

“Oh, aye,” said Robert Jones cheerfully. “But Willy were not in on it, on my oath.”

“Ye’re on your oath, Mr. Jones.”

“Oh, aye, so I am!”

“How did ye know of this plot?”

“Mrs. Morgan told me.”

More stirs from the jury and judge.

“When?”

“At-oh, a bit after noon on the day it happened, when I came to see Willy the first time. Did not see him, ran into Mrs. Morgan instead. She said she were expecting Mr. Trevillian, but that he would have to come back later, after Morgan had gone to Bath. She were real pleased, said when Mr. Trevillian did come, Morgan would pounce on him for having a bit of slap-and-tickle with her-you know, the sort of thing husbands do when they find out they are wearing horns. She said her husband thought they would get five hundred pounds out of the silly clunch, he were so simple.”

Sir James Eyre looked in the direction of the dock. “Morgan, what have you to say about this plot with your wife?”

“There was no plot, your lordship. I am innocent,” Richard said strongly. “There was no plot.”

His lordship pulled the corners of his mouth down. “Where is Mrs. Morgan?” he demanded of, it seemed, anyone in the court room. “She ought to be in the dock with her husband, so much is clear.” He shot a fierce look at Richard. “Where is your wife, Morgan?”

“I do not know, your lordship. I have never seen her from that day to this,” Richard answered steadily.

The prosecuting attorney made much of the plot and little of the absence of the co-conspirator, Mrs. Morgan. And when Sir James Eyre directed the jury, he too made much of the plot.

The twelve good men and true looked at each other in enormous relief. In less than a minute they could go home. It had been a very long, hard day; Gloucester’s Free Men were nowhere near enough to staff separate juries for each accused. There was no deliberation. Richard Morgan was found not guilty of stealing a watch, but guilty of grand larceny in the matter of extortion. William Insell was found not guilty on all counts.

Sir James Eyre turned his gaze to the dock, wherein Willy had sunk to his knees, weeping, and the shorn Richard Morgan-what a villain!-stood staring at something a great deal farther off than Gloucester’s city hall.

“Richard Morgan, I hereby sentence ye to seven years’ transportation to Africa. William Insell, ye may go free.” He banged his gavel to wake Sir George Nares up. “The court will come together again at ten of the clock tomorrow morning. God save the King.”

“God save the King,” everybody echoed dutifully.

The javelin man prodded the prisoners; Richard turned to descend into the dock well without bothering to look in Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian’s direction. Ceely had passed from his life as all things passed. The Ceelys did not matter.

And by the time he had plodded halfway back to Gloucester Gaol Richard found himself truly happy; he had just realized that very shortly he would be rid of Weeping Willy.

The sun was nudging the western horizon when Richard and Willy-still weeping, presumably from joy-passed through the castle gate under escort by two gaolers. Here Richard was detained, Willy sent onward. Is this the beginning of the difference between a man awaiting trial and a convicted felon? His gaoler indicated the head gaoler’s house; Richard moved off as passively as he did everything under an official eye. After three months he knew all the gaolers, good, bad and indifferent, though he avoided striking up any sort of acquaintance with them and never called any by his name.

He was ushered into a comfortable-looking room furnished as a place for social congress. It contained three people: Mr. James Hyde the attorney and the Cousins James. Both the Cousins James were in tears and Mr. Hyde looked mournful. In fact, thought Richard as the door was closed behind him with his escort on its far side, they look worse than I feel. This has come as no surprise, I knew it would happen thus in my bones. Justice is blind, but not in the romantic sense they taught us at Colston’s. It is blind to individuals and human motives; its dispensers believe the obvious and are incapable of subtleties. All of that witness testimony from the Jacob’s Well people had its roots in gossip; Ceely merely entered the gossip chain and contributed the right mite. Robert Jones he paid-well, he paid all of them, but save for Jones he was able to disguise his payments as thoughtful gifts to folk who know him and his family and its servants. Oh, they understood! But on oath they could deny had anybody asked. Jones he bought outright. Or else Annemarie fed Jones the story of the plot. In which case she belonged to Ceely body and soul, was involved in the conspiracy from its beginning. If that is so, then she lay in wait for me and all of it was a fabulous lie. I have been convicted on the testimony of a witness who did not appear: Annemarie Latour. And the judge, having asked me where she was, did not follow through.

His silence after he entered the room enabled the Cousins James to mop their eyes and compose themselves. Mr. James Hyde took the time to examine Richard Morgan at closer quarters than the court room had allowed. A striking fellow, big and tall-a pity he had not worn a wig, it would have transformed him. The case had hinged upon whether the accused was a decent man insulted beyond bearing at finding his wife in bed with another man, or whether the accused had, so to speak, cashed in on the opportunity his wife’s infidelity had offered. Of course he knew from the Cousins James that the woman was not his client’s wife, but had not made capital of it because, were she known as a mere whore, the case would have been blacker. It was the unveiling of a plot had done for Richard Morgan; judges were notoriously prejudiced against accused felons who committed their crimes with cold-blooded forethought. And juries found as the judge instructed them to find.

Cousin James-the-druggist broke the long silence, handkerchief tucked away. “We have bought this room and all the time we want with you,” he said. “Richard, I am so sorry! It was a complete fabrication-every one of those people, however menial, was a part of Ceely’s circle.”

“What I want to know,” said Richard, sitting down, “is why Mr. Benjamin Fisher of the Excise did not appear for me as a character witness? Had he, things might have gone very differently.”

The Reverend James’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “He was too busy, he said, to make a journey of eighty miles. The truth is that he is busy concluding a deal with Thomas Cave, and cares not about the fate of his chief witness.”

“However,” said Mr. Hyde, who looked far less imposing out of his attorney’s gear, “ye may be sure, Mr. Morgan, that when I write your letter of appeal to Lord Sydney, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, I will have a letter from Mr. Fisher attached. But not Benjamin. His brother John, the Commander.”

“Can I not appeal in a court?” Richard asked.

“No. Your appeal takes the form of a letter begging the King’s mercy. I will draft it as soon as I return to London.”

“Have some port, Richard,” said Cousin James-the-druggist.

“I have had naught to eat today, so I dare not.”

The door opened and a woman brought in a tray bearing bread, butter, grilled sausages, parsnips, cabbage and a tankard. She put it down without any expression on her face, bobbed a curtsey to the gentlemen, and departed.

“Eat, Richard. The head gaoler told me that supper has been served already in the gaol, so I asked for food.”

“Thank you, Cousin James, truly thank you,” said Richard with feeling, and dug in. But the first piece of sausage on his knife’s point was subjected to a long sniff before being gingerly tasted; satisfied, Richard chewed with gusto and carved off another slice. “Sausages,” he said, his mouth full, “are usually made from rotten meat when they are served to felons.”

His meal finished, Richard did sip at the glass of port, then grimaced. “It is so long since I have had sweet things that I seem to have lost my appetite for them. We get no butter with our bread, let alone jam.”

“Oh, Richard!” chorused the Cousins James.

“Do not feel sorry for me. My life is not over because I must spend the next seven years of it under some form or other of imprisonment,” said Richard, rising to his feet. “I am six-and-thirty and I will be six months short of four-and-forty when my sentence is done. The men of our family are long-lived, and I intend to keep my health and my strength. Those five hundred pounds from the Excise Office are mine no matter what happens, and I will write to the lackadaisical Mr. Benjamin Fisher directing that he pay them to you, Cousin James-the-druggist. Take what I have cost ye out of them, and use the rest to keep me supplied with dripstones, rags, clothes and shoes. With some to the Reverend James for books, including those he has already given me. I am not idle here, and my labor means that I am fed. But on Sundays I read. A blessing.”

“Remember, Richard, that we love you dearly,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, hugging and kissing him.

“And we pray for you,” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy.

Willy Insell was the only prisoner acquitted at the assizes held in Gloucester during that March of 1785. Six were sentenced to be hanged: Maisie Harding for receiving stolen goods, Betty Mason for stealing fifteen guineas, Sam Day for stealing two pounds of weaving yarn, Bill Whiting for stealing a sheep, Isaac Rogers for highway robbery, and Joey Long for stealing a silver watch. The rest, some ten in all, were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Africa, wherein His Britannic Majesty possessed no formal colony. Richard was well aware that had the Cousins James not testified as to his character, he too would have gotten the rope; though Bristol was far away, two of its leading citizens could not be quite ignored.

More importantly, how were they all going to fit into this tiny place? Within a week the answer was manifest: nine of the prisoners died of a malignant quinsy in the throat, as did the remaining children and ten debtors on the Bridewell side.

The situation in England’s prisons was absolutely desperate, which had not prevented the Gloucester judges from handing down their drastic sentences.

Between 1782 and 1784 three attempts had been made to deliver felons to America. The Swift was turned away on her first voyage, though some of her transportees escaped, assisted to do so by the Americans. On her second voyage in August of 1783 she took 143 prisoners on board and sailed from the Thames for Nova Scotia. But she got no farther than Sussex, where her human cargo mutinied and beached the ship near Rye. After which they scattered to the four winds. Only 39 were recaptured; of those, six were hanged and the rest sentenced to transportation to America for life. Just as if transportation to America were still an option, so slowly did the mills of government grind, not to mention the judicial mills.

In March of 1784 a third attempt to unload transportees in America was tried. This time the ship was the Mercury and the destination was Georgia (which, along with the other twelve newly united states, had already served stern notice to England that it would not, repeat, would not accept any transported felons). The Mercury took 179 men, women and children felons aboard and sailed from London. The mutiny occurred off the coast of Devon and the Mercury fetched up near Torbay. Some were still on board when recaptured, most had fled; 108 all told were apprehended, a few having ranged as far afield as Bristol. Though many of them were sentenced to hang, only two actually were. The political climate was shifting.

The Recovery in January of 1785 represented the last attempt of a disorganized nature to relieve gaol overcrowding; she took a cargo of felons to the equatorial wetlands of Africa and dumped them ashore without guards, supervision or much by way of necessities to survive. They died hideously, and the African experiment was never repeated. Clearly future transportees would have to be cared for in ways less provocative of public scandal. Between the prison reformers John Howard and Jeremy Bentham, the Quaker agitators against slavery and African expansion in general, and the two new names of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce looming on the horizon, Mr. William Pitt the Younger’s fledgling government deemed it wise to provide no ammunition for social crusaders of any kind. Especially since Bentham and Wilberforce were important men in Whig Westminster. The extra taxes economic necessity had made unavoidable were odious enough. Mr. William Pitt the Younger owned one quality in common with a convicted felon named Richard Morgan: he intended to survive for many years to come. And in the meantime, Jeremy Bentham was allowed to tinker with the plans for the new Gloucester Gaol, while Lord Sydney of the Home Department was instructed to find somewhere-anywhere!-to dump England’s huge surplus of convicts.

In the as yet unmodified Gloucester Gaol disease and proximity worked their wills.

Weeping Willy Insell, still weeping, was discharged, a free man, on the 5th of April. On the same day Mr. James Hyde the attorney forwarded the Humble Petition of Richard Morgan to Lord Sydney, together with a letter from Mr. John Fisher, Commander of the Bristol Excise Office. Lord Sydney’s indefatigable and highly efficient secretary, Mr. Evan Nepean, forwarded it on the 15th of April to the chambers of Sir James Eyre in Bedford Row; it would be up to him, the presiding judge in Morgan’s case, to review that case and advise Lord Sydney as to whether the King’s Mercy might or might not be extended to Richard Morgan. All very prompt, given that the trial had taken place on the 23rd of March. But there in Bedford Row the Humble Petition of Richard Morgan moldered; Mr. Baron Sir James Eyre was so busy that he had not the time to deal with any petitions, humble or otherwise.

In late July a letter came from Mr. Jem Thistlethwaite, who had disappeared from his lodgings and the London scene at much the same date as William Henry had vanished. Richard took it from Old Mother Hubbard with a sinking sensation in his chest; he would now have to open up that wound and air it. From the time that he had entered the Bristol Newgate it had been buried beneath conscious thought. Though what he had not realized was that his blotting out of William Henry had generated his determination to survive, even spurred him to perform the rituals he had established for himself, the rituals of purification which set him apart from all his fellows and caused them to regard him as somewhere between untouchable and mad. Why survive? To get through these seven years in a fit state to resume his search for William Henry, buried deep in his mind.

“Richard, I have just received a letter from your father, and I am utterly overset by his awful news. Getting through the last few gallons of my pipe of rum apparently caused me to think I had written to inform you of my intended flight, but that letter was either not written or went astray. I have been absent abroad since June of last year-Italy beckoned, I went running into her glorious embrace. It is our combined luck that upon my return a bare week ago, I was able to engage my old lodgings again, and so your father’s pages reached me.

“I have always known that your life would not go as you thought it would-do you remember? You said, ‘I was born in Bristol and I will die in Bristol.’ Even as you said it, William Henry on your knee, I understood that it would not turn out so. I feared for you. And I, who am quite incapable of love, loved you then as I love you now. I just do not know the how or why, save that I see something in you that you do not realize is there.

“Of William Henry I will say no more than that you will never find him. He was not meant for this earth, but wherever he is, Richard, he is happy and at peace. The truly good have no business here, for they have nothing to learn. And even atheists like me can believe that sometimes these things happen because, did they not, the future would hold worse. Be glad for William Henry.”

Richard put the letter down blindly, unable to see for the tears he had never been able to shed for William Henry. The other prisoners in the felons’ common-room, including Lizzie Lock, made no attempt to approach him as he sat on his box and wept. How strange that it should be Jem Thistlethwaite who broke down the dam and let the torrent of grief flow free at last. But he was not right. William Henry would come back one day, he was not gone from this world forever.

He took up the letter again at dinner time the following day, having spoken to no one, and no one having spoken to him.

“I have carved a little niche for myself among the new breed of Whigs the presence of a young leader like Pitt has permitted.

Oligarchy, though it must ever rule in the Lords, has quit the Commons. Men of ideas abound, and Pitt, could he only find the money, would indulge them all.

“Getting to you yourself, the prospect of transportation is nonexistent. The African experiment was such a disaster that no one at Westminster has the courage-or the stupidity, miraculously enough-to revive it in any form. India has been suggested, and discarded the way a man would divest himself of a shirt made of snakes. Our outposts there are perilous and circumscribed. Though these are not the reasons behind the decision. They are firmly based in the opposition of the East India Company, which wants no felons jeopardizing its activities in Bengal and Cathay. The West Indies want none but negroes for indenture or slavery, and the English grip on places like Nova Scotia and Newfoundland does not allow transportation. The French hover. As do the Spanish in the south.

“So it would seem that you will serve out your time in Gloucester. Rest assured, however, that as soon as I hear anything, I will pass it on to you. Dick says that you have organized yourself with what Cousin James-the-druggist calls a ‘cool kind of passion.’ ”

His answer had to wait until Sunday, when he took possession of the end of the table Old Mother Hubbard had installed in the felons’ common-room just before the assizes and not removed after them, on the theory that it gave some felons an extra storey to perch upon when the place was overcrowded. As if it knew times of undercrowding.

A rash of visitors had broken out, envoys of a friend of Mr. Pitt’s named Jeremy Bentham, at present touring Russia with the intention of writing a legal code for the Empress Catherine, but also the author of a treatise on the virtues and vices of setting felons to hard labor on public works, and exponent of a new kind of prison-in-the-round. His envoys popped in and out of the gaol inspecting it minutely and shaking their heads gloomily, gazing at the extensions its inmates were erecting and muttering about its all having to be pulled down again. Square! Why did the minds of men think square when round had no corners?

“I would rather be in Italy than in Gloucester Gaol, Jem, of that I can assure you.

“Of Ceely Trevillian and the affair at the distillery I can say no more than that I had the misfortune to run up against a man of birth and brain with no better outlet for his talents than intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation. He belongs on the stage, where he would have out-acted Kemp, Mrs. Siddons and Garrick combined. My only consolation is that when Cave and Thorne have arrived at a settlement with the Excise Office, I will be able to pay my debts and ensure that the Cousins James are not out of pocket when they buy me more things. I am never without a new book, though reading some of them is painful, as Clifton and the Hotwells keep cropping up. Two places I would rather not be reminded of, even by an Evelina or a Humphry Clinker. Not so much because of William Henry or Ceely as because of Annemarie Latour, with whom I sinned grievously. I can see the exasperation at my prudishness on your ugly face from here, but you were not there, nor could you have loved the man I became with her. Pleasure meant too much. Can you understand that? And if you cannot, how can I make you? I was a bull, a stallion. I rutted, I did not make love. And I loathed the object of my animality, who was an animal too.

“In Gloucester Gaol we are all in together, men and women-and children. Though it is a place of more fucking than suckling. The babies usually die, poor little creatures. And their poor mothers, who constantly carry and bear for nothing. At first the presence of the women appalled me, but as time has gone on I have come to realize that they make Gloucester Gaol endurable. Without them, we would be a collection of men brutalized beyond recognition.

“My own woman is Lizzie Lock, who has been here since the beginning of 1783 for stealing hats. When she sees one she fancies, she pinches it. Ours is a platonic friendship, we neither make love nor rut. I protect her from other men and she protects my box of belongings whilst I am laboring. Jem, if solvency permits it, would you find a grand hat for Lizzie? Red, or red and black, preferably with feathers. It would cast her into ecstasies.

“I must go. Even my elevated status in here does not guarantee tenure of so much table for a whole Sunday afternoon. That is the oddest part about it, Jem. For some reason (possibly that I am deemed mad) I notice that I am, for want of a better word, respected. Write to me sometimes, please.”

Cousin James-the-druggist came to see Richard in August, loaded with a new dripstone, more rags and clothes, medicines, books.

“But keep your present dripstone going, Richard, for I see no evidence that it is tainting. The more spare stones ye have, the better, and I have brought ye a good stout sack for surplus items. The Gloucester water is purer by far than any Bristol can produce, even from the Bishop’s feather off Jacob’s Well.” He was very ill at ease, talking for the sake of talking, and finding it very hard to meet Richard’s eyes.

“There was no real reason to make this journey in such hot weather, Cousin James,” said Richard gently. “Tell me the bad news.”

“We have finally heard from Mr. Hyde in Chancery Lane. Sir James Eyre got around to your petition for the King’s Mercy on the ninth of last month, or at least that is the date on his letter to Lord Sydney. He denied ye mercy, Richard, and most emphatically. There is no doubt in his mind that ye conspired with that woman to rob Ceely Trevillian. Even though she was never found.”

“The damning witness who was not there,” said Richard under his breath. “Not there, but believed.”

“So that is it, my poor dear fellow. We have exhausted all our avenues. Your reward is safe, however. It cannot be garnished because it is not related to the crime for which ye were convicted. I know ye’ve a few guineas, but when next I come I will bring ye a new box with a hollow long side to it-tops and bottoms are more likely to be examined than sides, I am told. It will contain gold coins packed in lint so that, no matter how hard the box is shaken or rapped, they will make no noise. The lint also sounds solid.”

Richard took both his hands and held them strongly. “I know I keep saying it, but I cannot thank you enough, Cousin James. What would I have become without you?”

“A bloody sight dirtier, Richard my love,” said Lizzie Lock after Cousin James-the-druggist had gone. “ ’Tis the apothecary gives ye your drips, soaps, oil of tar and all the rest of your popish ceremonials. Ye remind me of a priest saying Mass.”

“Aye, he is a fussy bugger,” said Bill Whiting, smiling. “It ain’t necessary, Richard my love-look at the rest of us.”

“Talking of buggery, Bill, I saw you sneaking around my sheep the other day,” said Betty Mason, who kept a flock for Old Mother Hubbard. “Leave them alone.”

“What chance do I have to bugger anybody except Jimmy and Richard my love? And they will not be in it. I hear, by the by, that all our lugging of rocks is to go for naught-Old Mother Hubbard says there is talk of a new style for the new prison.”

“I hear that too,” said Richard, sopping up the last of his soup with a piece of stale bread.

Jimmy Price sighed. “We are like whosit thingummabob who kept on having to roll the boulder up the hill but it always came down again. Christ, it would be nice to work for some purpose.” He glanced across to where Ike Rogers was hunched at the far end of the table the old brigade defended against all presumptuous comers. “Ike, ye have to eat. Otherwise Richard my love will have your soup too, the hungry bugger. I ain’t noticed the other five gallows birds off their food, nor worried much either. Eat, Ike, eat! Ye will not hang, I swear it.”

Ike vouchsafed no reply; the blustering bully was no more. Highwaymen were considered the aristocrats of criminals, but Ike could not seem to come to terms with his fate or adopt the die-hard attitude of the other five in similar case.

Richard went to sit on the bench beside him and put an arm about his shoulders. “Eat, Ike,” he said cheerfully.

“I am not hungry.”

“Jimmy is right. Ye will not go to the gallows. It is over two years since anybody hanged at Gloucester, though many have been sentenced to it. Old Mother Hubbard needs us to work to get his thirty pence a week for each of us. If we do not work, he gets but fourteen pence.”

“I do not want to die, I do not want to die!”

“Nor will you, Ike. Now drink your soup.”

“What a gloomy bugger Ike is, always mincing along in his riding boots as if he wore high heels. Jesus, his feet must stink! He even wears the things to bed, Richard my love,” said Bill Whiting the next day as they lugged their stones. “If he swings, so do I. It does not seem fair, does it? His loot was worth five thousand, my sheep ten shillings.” His demeanor was resolutely brave, but now he suddenly shivered. “Goose walked over my grave,” he laughed.

“Our geese would do more than walk over it, Bill. They would be digging after your worms.”

There were eight of them staunch friends: the four women, Bill, Richard, Jimmy and the pitiable Joey Long, who was their child. Richard shivered in his turn. Four of his seven friends might not live to see 1786 arrive.

Then three days after Christmas, all six condemned to death were reprieved, their sentences commuted to fourteen years’ transportation to-Africa. Where else? Jubilation reigned, though Ike Rogers never did recover his bombast.

The year 1785 had seen Richard a prisoner from beginning to end; its last day brought a couriered letter from Mr. James Thistlethwaite.

“There is movement at Westminster, Richard. All sorts of rumors are flying. The most pertinent one as far as you are concerned goes as follows: transportees to Africa held in all gaols outside London are to be put on the Thames hulks in readiness for shipment to foreign parts, but not across the King’s herring pond, which is the Western Ocean-on the maps, Oceanus Atlanticus. Since it is no longer his own private fishery, the rumors I hear (more strongly every day) talk of the Eastern Ocean-on damned few maps, Oceanus Pacificus.

“Not much more than a decade ago, the Royal Society and its powerful Royal Navy connections sent one Captain James Cook to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus across the sun. This Cook fellow kept discovering lands of milk and honey during what were, I gather, nosy wanderings. Little wonder that in the end his curiosity got him killed by the Indians of Lord Sandwich’s isles. The land of milk and honey which concerns us now reminded Captain Cook of the coast of south Wales, so he dubbed it, imaginatively, New South Wales. On the maps it can be found as ‘Terra Incognita’ or ‘Terra Australis.’ How far it goes from east to west is anybody’s guess, but it is certainly 2,000 miles from north to south.

“At about the same latitude south as the new American state of Georgia is north, Cook found a place he christened ‘Botany Bay.’ Why this name? Because that obnoxious, interfering man of letters and President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, snuffled around ashore there with Linnaeus’s pupil Dr. Solander to gather botanical specimens.

“Enter a gentleman of Corsican extraction, Mr. James Maria Matra. He was the first to put the idea into official heads, who huddled in countless consultations with Sir Joseph Banks, authority on everything from the birth of Christ to the music of the spheres. The result is that Mr. Pitt and Lord Sydney are convinced they have found the answer to a hideous dilemma: what to do with the likes of you. Namely, to send you to Botany Bay. Not precisely to be abandoned ashore there, as happened in Africa, but rather to put a few Englishmen and Englishwomen in a land of milk and honey neither the French, the Dutch nor the Spanish have gotten to yet. No place that I have ever heard of was settled by convicts, but such seems to be the intention of His Majesty’s Government in regard to Botany Bay. However, I am not sure that the verb ‘to settle’ is the proper one to use in this context. It is more likely that Mr. Pitt’s verb is ‘to dump.’ Though should the experiment actually work, Botany Bay will end in taking our leavings for generations upon generations and two goals will have been achieved. The first-and by far the more important-is to send England’s felons so far away that they cease to be either an embarrassment or a nuisance. The second-a ploy to lull the suspicions of our ever-multiplying Do Gooders, I am sure-is that His Majesty will own a new, if exploitably worthless, colony for the Union flag to float over. A colony populated by felons and gaolers. Undoubtedly its name in time will be ‘Felonia.’

“Enough punning. Be prepared, Richard, for removal from Gloucester. I have already written to Cousin James-the-druggist, who should descend upon you armed with tools of survival not far into 1786. And gird your loins for a shock. Once you board the hulks moored around the Royal Arsenal, you encounter London. There are three of these penal palaces. The Censor and the Justitia have been there for a decade and have earned much attention and many visits from Mr. John Howard. The third, the Ceres, is only now coming into commission. The hulks are operated under contract to the Government by a London speculator named Duncan Campbell. A canny Scotchman, of course.

“I am very sorry to have to tell you that the Thames hulks are for male prisoners only. You will enjoy no tender female ministrations nor calming influences. The hulks are floating hells, and I mean every word of that. I know I am comforting Job, but Job you are, Richard. And better a Job who knows what he is in for. Guard yourself well.”

“I have news,” said Richard, putting the letter down.

“Oh?” asked Lizzie, darning complacently. It couldn’t be bad news because his face was placid.

The needle stopped moving; her eyes rested fondly upon Richard my love (which had become his nickname). She knew absolutely nothing about him, for he had volunteered no information about himself beyond the terminology of his crime. Of course she loved him, for all that she would never bed him. In bedding lay a pain she knew she could not bear-a child with death snapping at its heels.

Her new hat, a dizzying confection of black silk and scarlet ostrich feathers, was perched incongruously on her head. He had given it to her for Christmas, carefully explaining that it was not a gift from him, but from someone he knew in London named Mr. James Thistlethwaite. A lampoonist, which he had informed her was someone who made obnoxious politicians, prelates and officials look very small and ridiculous through the power of the written word. She had no trouble believing that; as she could neither read nor write, persons who could earn a living from being literate were next door to God Himself.

So now, complacent needle going in and out and around a hole in one of Old Mother Hubbard’s stockings, she could ask in mild interest, “Oh?”

“My lampoonist friend in London says that everybody sentenced to transportation to Africa will be moved from the county gaols to the hulks in the Thames. Men convicts, that is. He says naught about what is to happen to the women.”

They were going through an underpopulated phase, so much so that the Michaelmas assizes had not been held that year. Scarlet fever had claimed too many lives to warrant Michaelmas assizes; instead there would be Epiphany assizes in January of 1786-if the numbers made it worthwhile.

Therefore some twenty people heard Richard’s news, and stilled to immobility. Those awaiting trial stirred first. The old brigade revived very slowly, eyes widening, heads turning, all attention riveted upon Richard my love.

“Why?” Bill Whiting asked.

“Somewhere in the world-I am not sure exactly where-is a place called Botany Bay. We are to be transported there, and I suppose we sail from London, as they are sending us to the Thames hulks, not to Portsmouth or Plymouth. The men only. Though it seems that women felons will also be going to Botany Bay.”

Bess Parker huddled against a white-faced Ned Pugh and wept. “Ned! They are going to separate us! What will we do?”

No one had words of comfort; best ignore her question. “Is Botany Bay in Africa?” asked Jimmy Price to break the silence.

“It seems not,” Richard said. “Farther away than Africa or America. Somewhere in the Eastern Ocean.”

“The East Indies,” said Ike Rogers, grimacing. “Heathens.”

“No, not the East Indies, though they cannot be too far away. It is south, very south, and but newly discovered by a Captain Cook. Jem says it is a land of milk and honey, so I daresay it will not be too bad.” He groped for a geographical anything. “It must be on the way to or from Otaheite. Cook was going there.”

“Where is Otaheite?” asked Betty Mason, as devastated as Bess; Johnny the gaoler would not be going to Botany Bay.

“I do not know,” Richard confessed.

The next day-New Year’s Day of 1786-the convicted felons of both sexes were marched to the gaol chapel, where they found Old Mother Hubbard, Parsnip Evans and three men they recognized only because they occasionally accompanied the mystery men from London who examined the construction work. John Nibbet was the Gloucester sheriff; the other two rejoiced in the appellation of Gentlemen Sheriffs-John Jefferies and Charles Cole.

Nibbet had been appointed spokesman. “The city of Gloucester in the county of Gloucestershire has been notified by the Home Department and its Secretary of State, Lord Sydney, that certain of the prisoners held in the gaol under sentence of transportation to Africa are to be transported elsewhere than Africa!” he bellowed.

“He did not draw a breath,” muttered Whiting.

“Do not court a thrashing, Bill,” Jimmy whispered.

Nibbet continued, apparently not needing to draw breath. “And further to this, the city of Gloucester in the county of Gloucestershire has been notified by said Home Department that it is to act as collecting agent for male transportees from Bristol, Monmouth and Wiltshire. When all have been assembled here, they will be joined by the following prisoners already in the Gloucester gaol: Joseph Long, Richard Morgan, James Price, Edward Pugh, Isaac Rogers and William Whiting. The entire group will then proceed to London and Woolwich, there to wait on the King’s pleasure.”

A long wail terminated the Sheriff’s proclamation. Bess Parker ran forward, stumbling in her fetters, to throw herself at Nibbet’s feet, wringing her hands together and weeping wildly. “Sir, sir, honored sir, please, sir, I beg you! Ned Pugh is my man! See my belly? I am to have his child, sir, and any day! Please, sir, do not take him away from me!”

“Cease this caterwauling, woman!” Nibbet turned to Old Mother Hubbard with a direful frown. “Does the prisoner Pugh have a permanent connection with yon yowling female?” he demanded.

“Aye, Mr. Nibbet, for some years. There was an earlier child, but it died.”

“My instructions from Under Secretary Nepean specifically state that only male felons without wives or wives at common law imprisoned with them are to be sent to Woolwich. Therefore Edward Pugh will remain in Gloucester Gaol with the female transportees,” he announced.

“Damned considerate,” said Gentleman Sheriff Charles Cole, “but I do not see the need for it.”

Old Mother Hubbard murmured into Nibbet’s ear.

“Prisoner Morgan, d’ye have a permanent connection with one Elizabeth Lock?” barked the Sheriff.

Every part of Richard’s being longed to say that he had, but his papers would be examined and they would inform these men that he had a wife. The fate Annemarie had given him lived on. “I do have a permanent connection with Elizabeth Lock, sir, but she is not my wife even in common law. I am already married,” he said.

Lizzie Lock mewed.

“Then ye’ll proceed to Woolwich, Morgan.”

The Reverend Mr. Evans said a prayer for their souls, and the meeting was over. The prisoners were escorted by a very glad Johnny the gaoler back to the felons’ common-room. Where Lizzie lost no time in hauling Richard into a fairly private corner.

“Why did you not tell me you are married?” she demanded, her plumes nodding and bouncing.

“Because I am not married.”

“Then why did ye tell the Sheriff ye were?”

“Because my papers say I am.”

“How can that be?”

“Because it is.”

She took him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. “Oh, damn you, Richard, damn you! Why do you never tell me anything? What point is there in being so close?”

“I am not intentionally close, Lizzie.”

“Yes, you are! You never tell me a thing!”

“But you never ask,” he said, looking surprised.

She shook him again. “Then I am asking now! Tell me all about yourself, Richard Morgan. Tell me everything. I want to know how ye can be married yet not married, damn you!”

“Then I may as well tell the lot of you.”

They gathered around the table and heard a very edited story relating only to Annemarie Latour, Ceely Trevillian and a distillery. Of Peg, little Mary, William Henry and his other family he told them nothing because he could not bear to.

“Weeping Willy said more than that,” Lizzie stated sourly.

“It is all I am prepared to say.” Richard assumed a worried look and neatly changed the subject. “It sounds as if we are to be moved very soon. I pray that my cousin James gets here in time.”

By the 4th of January the number of men in the felons’ section of Gloucester Gaol had swollen. Four men came in from Bristol and two from Wiltshire. Two of the Bristol men were very young, but two were in their early thirties and had been close friends since childhood.

“Neddy and I got drunk one night in the Swan on Temple Street,” said William Connelly, slapping Edward Perrott companionably on the shoulder. “Not sure what happened, but the next thing we were in the Bristol Newgate and got seven years’ transportation to Africa at last February’s quarter sessions. Seems we stole clothes.”

“Ye look well for spending a year in that place. I was there for three months just before,” said Richard.

“Ye’re a Bristol man?”

“Aye, but tried here. My crime was committed in Clifton.”

William Connelly was obviously of Irish extraction; thick auburn hair, short nose and cheeky blue eyes. The more silent Edward Perrott had the bumpy big nose, prominent chin and mousy fairness of a true Englishman.

The two Wiltshire men, William Earl and John Cross, were at most twenty years old, and had already struck up a friendship with the two Bristol youngsters, Job Hollister and William Wilton. Joey Long was so simple that he gravitated naturally to this young group from the moment they clanked into the felons’ common-room, and-which Richard found strange at first-Isaac Rogers elected to join these five. A few hours saw Richard change his mind-no, not at all strange. Oozing glamour and seniority, the highwayman could retrieve some of the clout he had lost among his Gloucester fellows when he had funked at the prospect of hanging.

Then the Monmouth man arrived to make the twelfth for Woolwich and informed them that he was William Edmunds.

“Christ!” cried Bill Whiting. “There are twelve of us for Woolwich and five of us are fucken Williams! I lay claim to Bill, and that is that. Wilton from Bristol, ye remind me of Weeping Willy Insell, so ye’re Willy. Connelly from Bristol, ye’re Will. Earl from Wiltshire, ye’re Billy. But what the devil are we to do with the fifth? What did you do to get here, Edmunds?”

“Stole a heifer at Peterstone,” said Edmunds with a Welsh lilt.

Whiting roared with laughter and kissed the outraged Welshman full on his lips. “Another bugger, by God! I borrowed a sheep for the night-only wanted to fuck it. Never thought of a heifer!”

“Do not do that!” Edmunds scrubbed at his mouth vigorously. “You can fuck whatever ye like, but ye’ll not fuck me!”

“He is a Welshman and a thief,” said Richard, grinning. “We call him Taffy, of course.”

“Did ye get the gallows?” Bill Whiting asked Taffy.

“Twice over, Da.”

“For one heifer?”

“Nay. I got the second for escaping. But the Welsh ain’t too happy at the moment, would not have liked to see a Welshman hanged even in Monmouth, so they reprieved me again and got rid of me,” Taffy explained.

Richard found himself drawn to Taffy as much as he was to Bill Whiting and Will Connelly. He had Welsh moods like clouds chasing the sun in and out on a heath-purple hillside. But then, Richard’s own roots were Welsh.

Cousin James-the-druggist made it to Gloucester just in time on the 5th of January, loaded down with sacks and wooden boxes.

“The Excise Office paid over your five hundred pounds at the end of December,” he said, burrowing. “I have six new dripstones, five of them with their brass frames and catching dishes because I felt that you must keep the five friends around ye safe and well.”

“Why five friends, Cousin James?” Richard asked, intrigued.

“Jem Thistlethwaite said in his letter to me that the men on the Thames hulks are separated into groups of six who live and work together.” He did not go on to tell Richard any of the other things Jem had explained about the hulks; he could not bring himself to. “That is why there are five new boxes, all containing what yours does, save not in the same quantity. I brought your tool box too.”

Richard sat back on his heels and thought about that, then shook his head. “Nay, Cousin James, not my tools. I will need them for this Botany Bay, but there are enough rays of enlightenment dancing inside my head to feel very strongly that did I take them with me now, they would not survive to see Botany Bay. Keep them until ye know what ship I will be on, then send them to me.”

“Here are more books from the Reverend James. He has concentrated this time on books about the world, geography, voyages. Heavier, because most are on ordinary paper and leather bound. But he thinks they may help, and hopes that ye’ll be able to carry them and all your others to Botany Bay.”

After which Cousin James-the-druggist could find nothing to say about practical matters. He got to his feet. “Botany Bay is at the other end of the world, Richard. Ten thousand miles if ye could fly, more like sixteen thousand as a ship must sail. I fear that none of us will ever see you again, and that is a terrible grief. All for something you never meant. Oh dear, oh dear! Remember that you will be in my prayers every day for the rest of my life, and your father’s, and your mother’s, and the Reverend James’s. Surely so many good intentions cannot be lost upon God. Surely He will preserve ye. Oh dear, oh dear!”

Richard reached for him, held him close, kissed his cheeks. Then he pattered away, head bent, and did not look back.

But Richard’s eyes followed him down the path between the vegetable patches, through the castle gate. He turned a corner, and was gone. And I will pray for you, Cousin James, for I love you more than I love my father.

Lizzie Lock draped around his shoulders, he gathered his troops at the table in the felons’ common-room.

“It is not that I wish to lead,” he said to his five chosen companions-Bill Whiting, Will Connelly, Neddy Perrott, Jimmy Price and Taffy Edmunds. “I am seven-and-thirty, which makes me the oldest amongst us, but I am not the stuff makes leaders, and ye should all know that now. Each of us must look for strength and guidance within himself, as is fit and proper. Yet I do have some learning, and a source of information in political London as well as a very clever druggist cousin in Bristol.”

“I know him,” said Will Connelly, nodding. “James Morgan of Corn Street. Recognized him the moment he came in. Thought, phew! Yon Richard Morgan is well connected.”

“Aye, enough. First I have to tell ye that the men on the hulks are divided into groups of six who live and work together. An it pleases you, I would have the six of us form one such group before some hulk gaoler does it for us. Is that agreeable?”

They nodded soberly.

“’Tis our good fortune to be twelve to London from here. The other six are young save for Ike, and he seems to prefer their company to ours. So I am going to advise Ike to do the same thing with his five. That way, there will be twelve of us on the hulk to form up as mutual protection.”

“You expect trouble, Richard?” asked Connelly, frowning.

“I do not honestly know, Will. If I do, it is more because of what my informants have not said, than said. We are all from the West Country. That will not be so on the hulks.”

“I understand,” said Bill Whiting, serious for once. “Best to decide what to do now. Later might be too late.”

“How many of us can read and write?” asked Richard.

Connelly, Perrott and Whiting held up their hands.

“Four of us. Good.” He pointed to the five boxes standing on the floor alongside him. “On a different note, these contain the things that will enable us to stay healthy, like dripstones.”

“Oh, Richard!” Jimmy Price exclaimed, exasperated. “Ye make a fucken religion out of your wretched dripstone! Lizzie is right, ye’re like a priest saying Mass.”

“It is true that I have made a religion out of staying well.” Richard looked at his group sternly. “Will and Neddy, how did ye manage to stay well through a year in the Bristol Newgate?”

“Drank beer or small beer,” said Connelly. “Our families gave us the money to eat well and drink healthy.”

“When I was there, I drank the water,” said Richard.

“Impossible!” gasped Neddy Perrott.

“Not impossible. I filtered my water through my dripstone. Its function is to purify bad water, which is why my cousin James imports them from Teneriffe. If ye think for one moment that Thames water will be more drinkable than Avon water, ye’ll be dead in a week.” Richard shrugged. “The choice is yours entirely. If ye can afford to drink small beer, well and good. But in London we will not have families on hand to help us. What gold we have ought to be saved for bribing, not spent on small beer.”

“Ye’re right,” said Will Connelly, touching the dripstone on the table reverently. “I for one will filter my water if I cannot afford to drink small beer. It is good common sense.”

In the end they all agreed to filter their water, including Jimmy Price.

“That settles that,” said Richard, and went to talk to Ike Rogers. He was sorry that he did not have twelve dripstones, but not sorry enough to share six of them among twelve. Ike’s group would have to manage as best it could, and at least Ike always seemed to have plenty of money.

If the twelve of us stick together as two groups, we stand a chance to survive.