Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

‘Marry!’ a voice shouted from behind us. ‘You can’t go down there by yourself!’ One of the drunken gaolers staggered down the corridor carrying a torch of his own. ‘You follow me!’ Pushing past us, he almost lost his balance as he missed the first step. He led us the rest of the way down the twisted narrow staircase, the ceiling so low that we had to walk with bent backs. ‘He has his own room, just like you said,’ the gaoler leered at Dowling with rotten discoloured teeth.

I watched Dowling’s jaw clench. He wasn’t smiling. ‘I didn’t mean the hold.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ laughed the gaoler with his mouth wide open. The stair took us to a small square anteroom just two foot wide by six feet long. At the end was a door and two more on either side. Floors, walls and ceiling were all made of cold, damp stone.

‘The sorrows of hell got hold upon me,’ Dowling whispered. I knew what he meant for they had got a hold of me too. It was silent.

The gaoler pointed to the cell on the left. Inside there wasn’t enough room to move, let alone hide, but it still took me a while to make out the figure squatted on the floor of the cell, squeezed into a corner. Sitting with his heels dug into the stone floor, his body was pressed into the wall. Squinting, I tried to find form in the shadowed bundle of rags and pale skin. A red scabby head, translucent arms, white and rotten. He sat in a pool of his own piss and the smell was choking.

‘Open the door,’ I said aloud, staring up into the gaoler’s bleary white face, red-lined and greasy. I could see fat lice walking about his hair in the light of the flame. His eyes wandered, drunk.

Out stretched a hand. ‘Shilling.’

‘If you let us take him upstairs.’

‘Two shilling.’

I was about to argue, but then he belched in my face a cloud that stank of pig fat and vomit, foul beyond description. I gave him the money. Then he put a big iron key into the lock, and as the door opened I saw bright green eyes lit up by the light of the torch. The rest of his face twitched. He wriggled and squirmed away from the gaoler as far as his chains would allow. Eyes shone out brightly from above a large angular nose. The stubbly head stilled, motionless above quivering body. As he becalmed, his eyes stopped flitting and fixed on us. Watching us, wide-eyed and alert, his head craned slowly forward. Then the gaoler elbowed him in the head so hard you could hear the crack.

Dowling erupted, pushing the gaoler hard against the wall with both hands. ‘God have mercy, you drivelling rogue!’

The gaoler dropped the torch on the floor so that all I could see was the stone flags, but I could hear the sound of two men breathing heavily and the sound of a man being struck solidly in the guts. Then I heard the sound of a man losing his guts and smelt it too. The torch rose, held now by Dowling, who stood over the lumpen figure of the gaoler kneeling on the floor, his head touching the stones.

‘Unlock that chain,’ Dowling commanded. I wondered if the gaoler would plead incapacitation. Wisely he did not. Instead he staggered to his feet, reached clumsily for his key and did as he was told. Dowling took the prisoner by the arm, then wound his thick, burly right arm around the man’s chest and sort of carried him back up the stairs and out of the hold. I followed as close as I could. The gaoler made a wheezing noise that might have been a plea for his torch but Dowling ignored him. So the butcher that could read and write had a short wick. I followed him to an empty cell, one with light and space and even a table and chair.

‘This must be where they put the King when he doesn’t pay his debts,’ I remarked. It was supposed to be a joke, but none laughed. Dowling’s face was set grim.

‘That was a foolish thing for me to do,’ he said in a whisper. ‘They will take their revenge upon him when we are gone.’

True, I supposed, but if he was to be hung, probably drawn and quartered too, then all was pretty much lost anyway. I didn’t share the thought with Dowling, who was busy propping up our man on a chair. Then he was gone, his footsteps ringing out down the corridor. Soon he was back with a bowl of thin mutton soup and a hunk of bread. The prisoner licked his lips and drew his shredded jacket about his narrow shoulders. His breathing steadied and the shaking diminished.

‘What is his name, do we know?’ I asked.

‘Richard Joyce,’ the man himself answered, his voice calm and melodious, the least likely voice you would have imagined from his appearance.

‘Well, Mr Joyce. Is it true that you killed Anne Giles?’ I asked. ‘She was my cousin, you know.’ Not that it mattered, but I hoped that he might be shamed into confessing. Murderers and thieves had a habit of denying their crimes and I didn’t want to spend all day listening to fantastic stories or tales of incredible hardship.

‘No,’ he replied before picking up the bowl with two hands and sipping quietly.

We waited, Dowling patiently, me less so, but every time I cleared my throat to speak he put a hand on my shoulder. When Joyce had finished eating, Dowling sat himself on the second chair, leaving me to perch on a small three-legged stool.

‘Tell us something about yourself, Joyce.’ Dowling leant back as if he was planning to spend all morning there. Straw moved in a dark corner of the room and there were sounds of rustling. Rats.

Joyce sat back and met Dowling’s gaze. ‘I was a soldier. I fought for the Republic. Paid for it ever since.’

‘Not just a Republican, though — is that not right, Joyce?’ What was the butcher talking about now?

‘No,’ Joyce replied after a lengthy pause, ‘I was a Leveller besides.’ A Leveller?

‘God has revealed the way of eternal salvation, only to the individual faith of each man, and demands that any man who wishes to be saved should work out his beliefs for himself,’ Dowling recited. These words were written by Milton, and reflected a philosophy that had been outlawed after the Restoration. Milton was still in prison somewhere.

Joyce smiled, his head leaning back against the cradle of the chair. Still he held the bread in his lap. ‘Abel’s art made the earth more fruitful than Cain, thereupon Cain would take Abel’s labour away from him by force.’

‘Kingly government may well be called the government of highwaymen.’ Dowling leant forward speaking the words carefully. I listened hard to see if any were close that might hear — this was treasonous talk and I rather wished Dowling would show more discretion. The Levellers were a raggedy bunch of fanatics that had been led by a man called John Lilburne, another extreme lunatic, a dangerous man whose views were rejected even by Cromwell. After many years in prison, he died in poverty seven years before. Pity. He would have got on well with Prynne.

‘Aye, I was one of Lilburne’s men. And I still believe that every man should be free and that he has no need of a King.’ Joyce stuck out his chin defiantly. As if I cared what he believed. Then he grimaced and looked out the window at the cold grey sky. He shook his head and wiped at his eye. ‘I was a fine man once. Had a house and land and a fine wife.’

Now he was levelled. ‘Where is she now?’

He bowed his head. ‘She fell when carrying a child. They say her blood went bad and poisoned the baby. She was ill for a while with wandering womb and died when it got to her head. That was twenty years ago.’ We let him reflect in silence for a while. ‘A long time ago.’

‘You fought for Cromwell, sir,’ said Dowling.

‘I fought for England and for God,’ Joyce corrected him, ‘against the man of blood.’ The man of blood was a name that some had bestowed upon Charles I before they chopped his head off to prove the point.