Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

The real reason they had been escorted from Bristol, Richard decided here, lay more in the fact that the Bristol Newgate wanted its irons back than cared about escaping prisoners. They were divested of every piece of iron they wore, Tom the bailiff gathering them to himself like a woman her new baby. As soon as all were accounted and signed for, he strolled off with his cargo in a sack to catch the cheap coach home. Leaving Richard and Willy to be put into fresh sets of the familiar locked fetters with a two-foot length of chain between. This deed done, a gaoler-they never saw the head gaoler himself-hustled them, carrying their precious boxes, to the castle.

What little of it was still habitable was such a crush of prisoners that sitting down with the legs stretched out was quite impossible. If these wretches sat, it was with knees drawn up beneath their chins. The chamber was exactly twelve feet square and contained around thirty men and ten women. The gaoler who had escorted them bawled an incomprehensible order and everybody who had managed to find enough space to sit got to their feet. They then filed outside, Richard and a weeping Willy in their midst, still carrying their boxes, and came to a halt in a freezing yard where twenty more men and women already stood.

It was Sunday, and the complement of Gloucester Gaol were to receive God’s message from the Reverend Mr. Evans, a gentleman so old that his reedy voice drifted into the winds eddying around the roughly rectangular space and rendered his words of repentance, hope and piety-if such they were-unintelligible. Luckily he considered that a ten-minute service and another twenty minutes spent sermonizing constituted adequate labor for the £40 per annum he was paid as prison chaplain, especially because he also had to do this on Wednesdays and Fridays.

After, they were herded back to the felons’ common-room, far smaller than that for debtors, of whom there were only half as many.

“It ain’t as bad as this Monday to Saturday,” said a voice as Richard put his box down by shoving someone else out of the way, and sat on it. “What a lovely man ye are!”

She squatted at his feet, elbowing those on either side of her roughly, a thin and stringy creature of about thirty years, clad in much-mended but reasonably clean clothes-black skirt, red petticoat, red blouse, black jerkin and an oddly cheeky black hat which sat with its wide brim to one side and bore a goose feather dyed scarlet.

“Is there no chapel where the parson can make his sermon heard?” Richard asked with a slight smile; there was something very likable about her, and talking to her meant he did not have to listen to Weeping Willy.

“Oh, aye, but it ain’t big enough for all of us. We are real full at the moment-need a decent dose of gaol fever to cut the numbers back. Name is Lizzie Lock.” And she thrust out a hand.

He shook it. “Richard Morgan. This is Willy Insell, who is the bane of my life as well as my shadow.”

“How de do, Willy?”

Willy’s answer was a fresh spate of tears.

“He is a water fountain,” said Richard tiredly, “and one day I am going to strangle him.” He gazed about. “Why are there women in with the men?”

“No separate gaol, Richard my love. No separate gaol for the debtors either, which is why we got a mention in John Howard’s report on England’s Bridewells about five year ago. And that is why we are abuilding of a new gaol. And that is why we ain’t so crowded Monday to Saturday, when the men are abuilding,” she said, rattling it off.

He picked one fact out of this. “Who is John Howard?”

“Fellow wrote this report on the Bridewells, I already told ye that,” said Lizzie Lock. “Do not ask me more for I do not know no more. Would not know that except it set Gloucester by the ears-the Bishop and his grand College and the beadles. So they got a Act of Parliament to build a new gaol. Supposed to be finished in another three years, but I will not be here to see it.”

“Expecting to be released?” asked Richard, whose smile was growing. He liked her, though he was not attracted to her in the slightest; just that her beady black eyes had not given up on life.

“Lord bless ye, no!” she said with great good cheer. “I went down for the sus. per coll. two year ago.”

“The what?”

“Hangman’s rope, Richard my love. Sus. per coll., which is what the gent who swings ye writes in his official book as soon as ye’ve stopped kicking. In London, ’tis called the nubbing cheat.”

“But you are still alive, I see.”

“Got reprieved Christmas before last. Transportation for seven years. So far, ain’t been transported nowhere, but ’tis bound to happen.”

“From what I hear, Lizzie, there is nowhere to transport you. Though there was talk about Africa in Bristol.”

“Ye’re a Bristol man! Thought so. Ye’ve a twang, not a burr.”

“Willy and I are both Bristol men. We came in today by wagon.”

“And ye’re a gentleman,” she said, tone wondering.

“Of sorts only, Lizzie.”

She poked a finger at the wooden box. “What is in there?”

“My belongings, though for how long is difficult to say. I note that some of these folk look sick, but most look a lot spryer than anyone in the Bristol Newgate.”

“Because of the new goal abuilding, and Old Mother Hubbard’s vegetable patches. Those who work get fed proper. ’Tis cheaper to use the prisoners than hire Gloucester laborers-something to do with a Act of Parliament letting prisoners labor. Us women got jobs too, mostly gardening.”

“Old Mother Hubbard?”

“Hubbard the head gaoler. Important thing is not to sicken-quarter rations if ye do. Gaol fever runs riot here. Lost eight to the smallpox over Christmas of eighty-three.” She patted the wooden box. “Do not fret about it, Richard my love. I will look after it-for a consideration.”

“What consideration?” he asked warily.

“Protection. I earn full rations by darning and mending, and a few pence too. Ye might say I rent my services in a mode the parson do not disapprove of. But the men are always after me, especially that Isaac Rogers.” She pointed to a big, burly fellow who looked a genuine villain. “A bad lot, that one!”

“What did he do?”

“Highway robbery. Brandy and chests of tea.”

“And what did you do?”

She giggled and flicked her hat. “I pinched the most wondrous silk hat! I cannot help myself, Richard-I love hats!”

“Do you mean they sentenced you to death for stealing a hat? ”

The black eyes twinkled; she hung her head. “ ’Twas not my first offense,” she said. “I told ye, I love hats.”

“Enough to swing for, Lizzie?”

“Well, I did not think of that when I pinched ’em, did I?”

He held out his hand to Lizzie for the second time. “Ye’ve a bargain, my girl. Consider yourself under my protection, in return for which I expect you to guard my box with your life. And do not try to pick its locks, Lizzie Lock! There are no hats inside, I swear.” He got to his feet by shoving people aside. “If I can move through the crowd, I intend to explore the full extent of my new domain. Mind my box.”

Fifteen minutes were enough to complete the tour. A number of small cells led off the common-room, unlit, unventilated and unpopulated, though two of them held privies. A set of crumbling stairs led to regions aloft, barred by a gate. The debtors’ common-room, also barred from the felons by a gate, was ten by twenty feet, but, like the cells, it contained no kind of window or vent and would have lain in stygian darkness were it not that its inmates had broken down a section of wall at its top to admit light and air. The yard lay beyond that. Though they had more space, the debtors’ lot was more invidious than that of the felons’; they did not work, and so subsisted on quarter rations. Like the inmates of the Bristol Newgate, they were emaciated, partially clothed in rags, and apathetic.