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.
The news that Dick and Cousin James-the-druggist had brought was cheering, no denying that. Senhor Habitas was an unexpected ally—still writhing over the fact that it had been he who introduced Richard to Mr. Thomas Latimer, clearly. Poor man! What blame could be laid at his door? These things happen, thought Richard drowsily, closed his eyes and fell immediately into dreamless darkness.
Late in the afternoon on the morrow Dick appeared alone with a sack of food and small beer over his shoulder.
“Jim is still at Cousin Henry’s chambers,” he explained as he squatted on his hunkers close enough to keep what he said private from all ears but those of the avidly eavesdropping Willy.
“It has not gone as we expected,” said Richard flatly.
“Yes.” Dick clenched his hands and gritted his teeth. “You are not to be tried in Bristol, Richard. Ceely Trevillian lodged his suit with the authorities in Gloucester on the ground that the crime occurred in Clifton, and therefore outside Bristol’s borders. Your detention in our Newgate is temporary—only until the papers are officially approved and the witnesses’ testimony processed, whatever that means.” He waved his hands about wildly. “My head is ringing with legal talk! I do not understand it—I never have understood it—and I never will understand it!”
Richard leaned his head against the blackened wall and gazed beyond his father’s hunched form to the pissy horse trough and the four disgusting privies. “Well,” he said at last through a tight throat, “be all that as it may, Father, I have some more urgent needs.” He gestured toward his feet. “First of all, I must have rags to pad these irons. One day, and my stockings have worn through. Tomorrow it will be my skin, and the day after that, my flesh. If I am to come out of this—and I swear I will!—I must keep my good health. As long as I can drink small beer and eat bread, cheese, meat and fruit or green vegetables, I will not suffer.”
“They will send ye to Gloucester Castle,” said Dick, lips quivering. “I do not know a soul in Gloucester.”
“Nor does any other Morgan, I suspect. What a clever fellow is this Ceely Trevillian! And how much he wants me down. Is it for the excise fraud and his neck, or because I derided him as a man?” He shook his head, smiled. “Both, probably.”
“I heard a rumor,” said Dick doubtfully.
“Tell me, Father. My weeping days are over, you need not be afraid that I will shame ye,” said Richardly gently.
His father’s face reddened. “Well, it came to me through Davy Evans, my new rum distiller—beautiful drop, Richard! He told me that the trade is saying that Cave and Thorne went to Trevillian the moment they heard about your rumpus in Clifton, and asked him to prosecute you and Willy. You and I know that Trevillian is actively involved in the excise fraud, but the trade is ignorant of that, and has made the connection a different way. Davy Evans says Cave and Thorne want you and Willy convicted felons before the excise case can come to court. Then there is no case, for felons cannot testify. Furthermore, Cave has been to see the Commander of Excise—your Benjamin Fisher’s brother, John—it is all in the family, as usual—and offered to make a sixteen-hundred-pound restitution. The Brothers Fisher are of course aware that you and Willy have been arrested and know perfectly well why Trevillian is doing this, but there is absolutely no proof.”
