Antonia Hodgson - The Devil in the Marshalsea

‘Samuel…?’ she said, eyes studiously upon the page.

‘Yes, my dear?’

‘Is it true that a man’s prick looks like a white hog’s pudding?’

Fleet coughed out a staccato of pipe smoke. ‘Well… I suppose it does, in a manner of speaking.’ He slid his gaze to mine. ‘Why don’t we ask Mr Hawkins for a practical demonstration?’

Kitty sat bolt upright, green eyes bright with alarm. When she spied me standing in the doorway she gave a scream of indignation and ran from the room, skirts whispering across my legs as she passed.

Fleet laid down his pipe, put his knuckles to his mouth, and laughed until the tears ran down his face. I picked up the book that had fallen to the floor and read the frontispiece:

THE SCHOOL OF VENUS

OR, THE LADIES’ DELIGHT,

REDUCED INTO RULES OF PRACTICE.

Being the Translation of the French,

L’Ecole des Filles

By S. Fleet

I flicked idly through the pages and arrived upon a rather cheerful drawing of a couple fucking on an ottoman.

‘All my own work,’ Fleet called out proudly. ‘And it’s the full translation, mind – not like that scoundrel Curll. I fervently believe there is a special place in hell for booksellers who promise a volume crammed with filth and don’t deliver on it.’

I dropped the book back on my bed for later. ‘Mr Woodburn said something strange to me, after you’d left.’

‘Well, that has certainly removed any frisson from the room,’ Fleet observed, waving me to the chair opposite his. He steepled his fingers and narrowed his eyes while I relayed the chaplain’s confession. ‘ Was he talking of Gilbourne, do you think?’ he asked, when I was done.

‘Perhaps… But then why not give his name?’ I shook my head. ‘But it was more than that. I have a feeling…’ I paused, hardly able to believe it. ‘I think Woodburn saw something that night. I think he might… He had the look of a guilty man, Fleet. I cannot fathom it, but there it is.’

Fleet settled back and gazed up at the ceiling, deep in thought. ‘I think Woodburn knew his attacker.’ He placed his hand on his left shoulder, tapped his finger where the wound lay. ‘There is no conceivable way he could have been stabbed from behind with a wound of that kind.’ He took his pipe and mimed the blade’s thrust. ‘They must have been standing face to face. Woodburn would have looked straight into his eyes as the blade fell.’

A cold, thin feeling slid down my spine. ‘Who was it, Fleet?’

He shook his head. ‘Not you. Not me. Not Jakes,’ he said, counting us off on his fingers. ‘We were all returning from Snows Fields at the time.’

‘And not Gilbourne,’ I said miserably. ‘He arrived when we did. Acton , then…? Damn it. We’re going about in circles!’

‘Whoever it was, we shall not puzzle it out tonight,’ Fleet reasoned. ‘Gilbourne has fled, Acton’s busy mopping up after the riot and if I know Simon Siddall he’ll have given Woodburn a sleeping draught and charged him a guinea for it.’

‘Well then, there is only one choice left to us, Mr Fleet.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Punch?’ he asked, hopefully.

I grinned. ‘Punch.’

The Tap Room was closed, smashed and battered by the riot, but nothing stopped the flow of drink in the Marshalsea. There was too much profit in it, and anyway – who wanted to stay sober in here? Mrs Bradshaw and Mary Acton had joined forces and set up a makeshift bar in the long, low retiring room in the Palace Court. I had no desire to return to the place where I had been beaten and humiliated only the night before, so I ventured out into the yard to find a porter who would take my order and bring it over to Belle Isle.

The Park had settled back into an uneasy peace after that short, bright flare of violence. A few of the men – prisoners and trusties alike – were nursing cuts and bruises, but no one seemed to have been seriously injured, at least on this side of the wall. Mack had set up a game of Hazard under the Court porch, though it was growing dark now and there was a chill in the air. I smiled and nodded politely, but did not head over to greet him. I had grown less fond of Mack the more I knew him; he was Acton’s man, when it came to it, and unlike Trim he had not lifted a finger to help me when I was dragged over to the Common Side.

Jenings was lighting the lantern in the middle of the Park; a fiddlesome task given its height. I strolled over to thank him for calling out a blessing when I was chained to the wall of the Strong Room. His words had been the one bright moment of comfort during that long and terrible night, and I had not forgotten it.

‘I wish I might have done more, sir,’ he said, glancing about him to be sure we were not overheard. ‘If I were a different man I’d stand up against the lot of them.’ He clenched his jaw. ‘They are not Christianlike, Mr Hawkins. And now poor Mr Woodburn has been attacked in God’s chapel. And on a Sunday!’

We both shook our heads at this. I feared that I myself was not as ‘Christianlike’ as Jenings wished to believe, but I agreed with him that the manner of Woodburn’s attack was shocking. Stabbing a clergyman when he was at prayer in his own chapel – what kind of a man would dare commit such a sacrilegious act? But then, if a man were prepared to commit cold-blooded murder, what would he not do? I must speak with Woodburn again, as soon as he was recovered. It was his duty to confess the truth of it; something I would put to him as soon as he was strong enough to hear it. Tomorrow – it would have to be, the moment he was awake. There was no time to waste. I did not intend to be thrown back in the Strong Room.

I hailed a porter and ordered a four-shilling bowl of punch and some food. We had missed dinner, save for the bread and fruit we’d eaten out in Snows Fields, so I chose several dishes to share with Fleet and paid the man an extra penny to hurry it along. It was all Fleet’s money, of course, but I didn’t think he would mind. He had enough of it.

I was returning to Belle Isle when I felt a soft touch upon my shoulder. I spun round to discover Catherine gazing up at me, grey eyes bright with worry. She was wearing a charcoal-coloured riding cloak with the hood up, framing her face.

‘Mrs Roberts.’ I gave her a short bow.

She inclined her head, but her eyes darted up to the windows as if she feared we were being watched. ‘I was troubled to hear of your ordeal last night.’ She placed a gloved hand upon my arm. ‘You are recovered, I trust?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied, sparing her the truth. My fresh injuries – added to the beating I’d received in St Giles – would take many days to heal. And there was something more, beneath the physical hurt. I had no time to acknowledge it now, but I knew it was waiting for me, like a bailiff at the door. ‘Were you caught in the riot?’

‘I kept to my room,’ she said, then lapsed into silence.

I waited, conscious of the wall that was growing up between us. I’d thought – for a little while – that she might have some affection for me. I had wanted to prove to her that I was more than what she saw, better than her husband. I might have changed my ways for her. Perhaps. Perhaps . In any case, she was not quite what she appeared. In truth, I did not really know Catherine Roberts at all. She had good reasons for everything she had done. And I felt sympathy for her troubles – even more so now I knew how close her husband had come to betraying her in the worst possible fashion. But I wasn’t sure I could trust her.

By chance we had stopped right next to the trap door of the store cellar. There had been no more ghostly sightings since I’d grabbed a hold of the rather fleshy Mr Simmons two nights before, but I was sure Catherine was at work on a fresh plan to clear her husband’s name. This much, at least, I believed – that she wished to remove the stain of suicide from Roberts’ death and reclaim her son.