Antonia Hodgson - The Devil in the Marshalsea

‘Sharp eyes, quick hands. She brings me secrets. Steals things I can use…’ Something cruel gleamed in her eyes. ‘How do you think your letter fell into my hands? Did it drop from the sky, perhaps?’ She fluttered her fingers.

‘Fleet stole it from me. He confessed it.’

‘Ahh… le diable !’ she cackled. ‘Even he has a weakness! Non, non . He was protecting his dear little Kitty. She stole your letter and brought it to me .’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, dismayed.

She laughed in delight. ‘I told you, monsieur. She is mine. And you will not take her from me.’

Out in the yard, Mack was letting Acton win at shuttlecock while Cross looked on with a sly grin. Cross had played no part in Roberts’ death: I was certain of that now. If it had been about money, or revenge, then I could have believed it of him a thousand times over. But Cross was not interested in saving a man’s soul. And if Cross had been involved, Gilbourne’s money would never have reached the Common Side. Whoever killed Captain Roberts – whoever dragged his body across the yard and hanged him from a rafter in the Strong Room – had believed he had God on his side.

In the middle of the Park, Jenings was lighting the lamp as the afternoon drifted towards twilight. The large ring of keys at his belt jangled as he worked. I was about to approach him when the door to the coffeehouse swung open and Kitty emerged, hitching up her skirts and smiling as she ran towards me. As she came closer she faltered and slowed her pace. Her smile dissolved. ‘Tom. You’re so pale. What ails you?’

I stared down at her. She’d betrayed me – and I’d nearly died because of it. I should hate her. I forced myself to hate her. ‘You stole the letter.’

I wanted her to deny it – more than anything. But I could see the guilt burning in her eyes. ‘I… I wanted to explain before,’ she stammered. ‘Samuel wouldn’t let me.’ She paused at the mention of Fleet’s name, then took a deep breath and continued. ‘He took the blame for me…’

‘There is no need to explain, Kitty.’

‘Oh, Tom! I’m so glad! Madame Migault caught me reading it and she snatched it from me – to play a game, she said. I’d only read the first few lines – I’d no idea any harm would come of it. When they sent you to the Strong Room I almost died . I only thieved it as a game – to pay you back for calling me a little servant girl to Mrs Roberts.’ She bit her lip at the memory. ‘As if I were nothing. Worthless.’

I smiled. ‘Well, that was wrong of me. You are much more than a servant girl.’

She smiled a heartbreaking smile and reached for my hand. ‘Am I?’

‘Naturally.’ I pulled my arm away. ‘You are also a fine thief and an excellent liar. And I’m sure that soon enough you will learn to spread your legs and make a decent whore as well.’

She flinched, as if I’d struck her. Then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘Do you think you are the first man to say such things to me?’ She looked me up and down, and it was as if her sharp green eyes were taking in every inch of me, from my borrowed clothes to my empty pocket, right to my very core. ‘I thought better of you,’ she said. ‘So did Samuel.’ And then she turned and walked away.

I thought of running after her. I thought of catching her in my arms and telling her the truth – that I had forgiven her the moment Madame Migault had told me. In a heartbeat. And the fact that I had forgiven her so easily terrified me. I could lie and swear it was the fever burning in my blood that made me cruel. In truth I had wanted to hurt her. Her theft – her betrayal – had given me the excuse I had been looking for to push her away, like a boat nudged out from the shore to float out and disappear to the horizon. I had tasted what Kitty wanted from me when we kissed, though she’d tried to hide it. More than I could give. More than I could afford to give a servant girl. A kitchen maid.

Acton had it right. I was an idiot.

I pulled out Fleet’s silver watch. It was almost five o’clock. I had so little time left to save myself – and yet I could almost feel the truth ahead of me, just beyond my grasp. Who was Woodburn’s accomplice? Not Cross. Not Trim. Then who? How had he killed Fleet – and Mitchell for that matter? They had both died the same way: murdered in a locked room while others slept about them. Oh, God. The cobbles danced and spun before my eyes as I realised what I must do.

I had to speak with Captain Anderson. I had to go back over the wall.

A few minutes later I held the key to the Common Side door tight in my palm. Gilbert Hand had a key for everything but there was suspicion in his copper eyes when he pulled this one out for me. ‘You want to go back over there? What for? Not gone mad, have you, Hawkins? I hear old Woodburn’s half a step from Bedlam…’

I couldn’t afford to pay him anything for the loan of the key. The only coin I had left was the silver crown I’d found in the dust of Belle Isle – but I needed that as evidence. And I was damned if I would give him Fleet’s watch. So I traded in the only other currency Hand understood – information. I told him everything I knew about Roberts’ murder apart from Trim’s involvement, and promised more once I’d spoken with Anderson.

‘Anderson?’ Hand frowned and scratched beneath his brown wig. ‘He’s chained up in the Strong Room for starting the riot.’ He grabbed my sleeve. ‘Ten minutes, no more. And if they catch you, I’ll say you stole it from me.’

So now I stood within the shadow of the wall, just as I had the first time I’d stepped into the prison yard. It felt as if twenty years had passed since then, not four days. A soft breeze blew through the Park, bringing with it the scent of tobacco. Without thinking I glanced up towards the Tap Room balcony. Fleet was not there, nor ever would be. There was no one to pull me back from the wall, to clap an arm about me and drag me upstairs for a glass of punch. And there was no one to see me slot the key into the lock, or slip through the door and into the Common Side.

I closed the door as quietly as I could and rested my back against the dank wall. I could hardly breathe, the weight of terror pressing on my chest as if a house had collapsed on me. I was risking my life in here. If Acton found me breaking into the Common Side he would beat me to death in front of the whole gaol.

Fortunately for me the yard was empty, the prisoners still locked in their wards as punishment for the riot. I crept down the wall towards the Strong Room, stealing glances at the Tap Room balcony in case someone should step out and see me – a solitary figure in the empty yard. I inched my way forward, the sweat trickling down my back. As I drew closer a dozen rats rushed squealing from the stinking water that ran between the wall and the Strong Room, as if they remembered my scent. I kicked at them as they scrabbled about my feet, then hurried to the door.

I’d thought it would be locked – that I would have to call to Anderson through the small hole carved above it. But it swung free when I pushed it, letting out a familiar warm stink of death and decay. I shrank back, my arm across my nose and mouth, fighting the instinct to turn and run.

Anderson was chained to the wall just as I had been two nights before, the iron cap screwed tight to his skull and the collar biting into his thick neck. Rain had seeped through the roof in the night and the ground about him was churned to a soupish mud. His face was crusted with blood and he had two black eyes, but he seemed calm as I approached, as if resigned to whatever Fate might fling at him next.

‘Hawkins,’ he growled, then coughed, spitting an oyster of phlegm into the darkness. ‘I told you not to come back here.’