Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

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.