Antonia Hodgson - The Devil in the Marshalsea

‘Have pity, sir!’ I called. ‘Leave me the light.’

‘ Have pity, sir! ’ he mimicked in a high, whining voice. And then he slammed the door, plunging me into darkness.

For a while I lay in a daze of pain and disbelief. It had all been so swift and so brutal; no time to defend myself or bargain my way out of trouble. My head pounded from the iron cap that gripped my skull like a vice; even the smallest movement would gouge my skin until the blood ran down my face. My body, battered and bruised enough from my beating in St Giles, ached and throbbed against the cold, rotten floorboards.

I could barely see in the gloom, but I could sense the corpses in the shadows, just a few feet away. The rats were creeping back; I could hear them moving in the darkness. One scrabbled across my legs. I kicked it away, kept kicking even when it was long gone back to the other side, back to the corpses. Easier meat. I tucked my legs beneath me and began to weep, silently.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. There were no windows, but there was a narrow gap above the door and a few holes in the roof that let in the last of the day’s fading light. If I could just stay calm… I set my mind free; tried to imagine myself far away… but it was no use, the stench and the damp and the horror of the place held me pinned to the room just as tightly as the iron collar around my throat.

So this was where Captain Roberts had been found, hanging from a beam, his body shattered and broken. I prayed for his sake that he was already dead when they dragged him here.

The rats squealed, pouring over the corpses in a frenzy. I heard one of the bundles tumble from the stack, landing with a dull thud. The rats swarmed over it, and the cloth slid free. I saw an arm, grey-white and bloodless. Was it Jack Carter? Perhaps. It was hard to say for sure in the half-light. But I knew he was there, and I could hear the rats. I knew what they were doing only a few paces away.

I screamed, then. I screamed and cursed and howled at them to let me out. Screamed loud enough for the whole prison to hear me.

No one came.

In the end the fight left me and I lay back, exhausted and numb. As the sun set and the room sank into blackness my mind turned in upon itself, thoughts spinning and colliding. I thought of Gilbourne and Fleet, of Catherine Roberts, of all the mistakes I had made since I’d come to the Marshalsea. Later, I heard the nightly lamentation of the Common Side rise up into the night sky and I joined my voice with them, the other damned and wretched souls trapped in this hell on earth.

‘You fool. You fool,’ I whispered to the dark. For it didn’t matter how I railed against Acton, and the cutpurses who attacked me in St Giles, I knew where the fault lay. My father had predicted it, long before that witch Madame Migault. The path you have chosen leads but one way, Thomas.

At some point, perhaps around midnight, the light from a lantern shone through the hole above the door and a voice called out softly. ‘God save you, Mr Hawkins.’ Mr Jenings, on nightwatch. By the time I could think to reply, the light had gone.

I learned about despair that night. Its cold, deathless fingers wrapped about my heart until I was beyond fear and pain – beyond all feeling. The damp and rotten floor chilling my bones; my skin crawling with pests; the collar fixed about my throat; the rats fighting in the shadows; the festering corpses; the knowledge that I would join them soon enough… at some point I surrendered to it all and the night rolled on, inch by inch, moment by moment.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them Captain Roberts was hanging from a beam in front of me. But then I saw it was my face and I began to choke, the noose rough and tight about my throat, and I was twisting on the end of the rope, legs kicking, fighting to breathe. The rope snapped and I fell to the floor but I was cold, death-white, and the rats were pouring down from the walls, hundreds and hundreds of them, screaming as they clambered over me, teeth like daggers and eyes red like the furnaces of hell. Teeth slicing into flesh. Someone was banging on the door but they were too late, there was nothing left, nothing but bones and gobbets of blood.

‘Open this door!’

Charles.

I opened my eyes and the dream dissolved away. Daylight streamed through the tiny gap above the door.

A scuffle; raised voices. A moment later the door flew open. I squinted, dazzled by the light.

‘My God. What have you done to him?’

‘Wait, Mr Buckley, don’t poison yourself.’ Woodburn’s voice. ‘Let Chapman pull him out of there.’

Another scuffle and then Charles was kneeling in front of me, coughing into a sweet-scented cloth held to his mouth and nose. He loosened the screws of my collar with trembling fingers. The collar fell free and he began unscrewing the heavy skull cap, eyes on mine. ‘You’re safe, Tom. I’m here,’ he said softly. ‘You, there!’ he turned and shouted, voice muffled behind the cloth. ‘Unlock his chains, damn you.’ He pulled the skull cap free and rested my head on his chest while Chapman unchained me.

Charles grabbed my hand. ‘My God, he’s frozen to the bone! Tom, listen.’ He touched my face. I couldn’t stop shivering. ‘Try to stand. I’ll help you.’

He put his shoulder under my arm and I staggered to my feet, the room lurching and spinning about me. Trim was waiting outside with Woodburn. The chaplain gaped at me, horrified. ‘Lord help the poor boy. He’s half-dead.’

Trim rushed forward and helped Charles carry me out into the yard. I cringed and shrank back as the sun hit my eyes.

‘He needs heat and a bath, and quick; or we’ll lose him,’ Trim said.

‘Do you see, Buckley?’ Woodburn cried, trailing after us. ‘Do you see what is being done in Sir Philip’s name?’

‘Run ahead, sir!’ Charles snapped. ‘Call for hot water and plenty of it.’

I sank to my knees, wrapping my arms about me. I could still feel the weight of the skull cap pressing down on my head. I touched my fingers to my temples. They were sticky with blood. I began to shake again, more violently. I was still not sure if this was a dream. Perhaps I would wake again, still chained to the wall.

Across the yard they were opening up the wards and pulling out the bodies. Only three today. Trim and Charles turned away and began to retch.

They opened Anderson’s ward last. The men had been banging on the door and shouting furiously, screaming to be let out, so Wills had left them until last out of spite. When he opened the door all the prisoners spilt out from the ward as if there were a wild animal trapped in with them. Anderson was the last one out. He was pulling something along the ground. Another body, trailing blood along the cobbles.

‘Which one of you did it?’ he yelled in a fury at his ward mates, spraying spittle in the air. ‘Which one of you bastards murdered him?’

He laid the body out in the yard just a few paces away. Harry Mitchell. My stomach lurched. He’d been stabbed through the heart, his eyes fixed in a final moment of horror. I stared at his white, lifeless face and the walls began to press in, squeezing closer and closer. Trim kneeled down and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Breathe,’ he whispered. ‘Just breathe.’

‘This is your fault, boy.’

I looked up at Anderson, looming over me, his face flushed red with anger. And I knew he was right. Mitchell had offered to help me – for a price – and now he was dead. ‘I’m sorry.’

Anderson spat at my feet. ‘I swear if you ever come over here again, they’ll be pulling your body out into the yard. Do you understand?’