“Cousin James,” said Richard, smiling with enormous affection, “I kiss your hands and feet.”
“No need to go that far, Richard.” He rose and dusted his hands together, then suffered a change of mood. “I brought the box today,” he said carefully, “because no one will tell me when ye’re likely to be moved to Gloucester. Since the next assizes are not due until Lent, it may not be soon. But it may be tomorrow. And James-of-the-clergy said to tell ye he will be visiting.”
“It will be a joy to see him,” said Richard, feeling light-headed. He rose while Dick, still squatting, scooped up his shorn hair. “Father, wash your hands in vinegar and oil of tar when you get home, and do not touch your face until you do. Bring me clean underdrawers and soap, I beg you!”
The move did not happen on the morrow. Richard and Willy remained in the Bristol Newgate until into the new year of 1785. A blessing in some ways—his family could see to his needs; a curse in others—his family witnessed the misery of his situation.
Determined to see Richard for herself, Mag came once. But after the horrors of finding him amid that horde of wraiths, one look at his face and bristling scalp saw her faint dead away.
That was not to be the worst. Cousin James-the-druggist came alone just after Christmas. “It is your father, Richard. He has had a stroke.”
The eyes Richard turned upon him had changed out of all recognition. Even through William Henry the tranquillity and flashes of humor had not completely vanished, but now they had. Life was not gone from them, but they observed rather than reacted. “Will he die, Cousin James?”
“No, not of this stroke. I have put him on a strict diet and hope to ensure that no second and third follow. His left arm and left leg are affected, but he can speak and his thought processes are not disordered. He sends all his love, but we feel that it is not wise for him to visit the Newgate.”
“Oh, the Cooper’s Arms! It will kill him to have to leave it.”
“There is no need for him to leave it. Your brother has sent his oldest boy to train as a victualler there—a good lad too, not so money-hungry as William. And pleased to be out of that household, I suspect. William’s wife is as hard as she is watchful—well, I do not need to tell ye that.”
“I daresay ’tis she has put her foot down and forbidden Will to visit me in gaol. He must be mourning the loss of his gratis saw-setter,” said Richard without rancor. “And Mum?”
“Mag is Mag. Her answer for everything is to work.”
Richard did not reply, just sat on the flags with his legs stretched out in front of him, Willy the shadow on his far side. Fighting tears, Cousin James-the-druggist tried to study him as if he were a stranger—not so difficult these days. How could he be so much handsomer than he used to be? Or was it that his handsomeness had gone unnoticed? The raggedly cropped trying-to-curl hair, no more than half an inch long, revealed the fine shape of the skull, and the sharp cheekbones and aquiline blade of nose stood forth in the smooth, unlined face. If that face had altered, then the change lay in his mouth; the sensuous lower lip remained, yet the whole had firmed and straightened, lost its dreamily peaceful contours. His thin, peaked black brows had always lain close to the eyes beneath, though now they looked—oh, more as if they belonged, as if they had been etched in as emphasis.
He is six-and-thirty, and God is trying him as He tried Job, but somehow Richard is turning the table on God without cheating or insulting Him. Over the course of the last year he has lost wife and only child—lost his fortune—lost his reputation—lost family like his selfish brother. Yet he has not lost himself. How little we know of those we think we know, in spite of a whole lifetime.
Richard suddenly smiled brilliantly, his eyes lighting. “Do not worry about me, Cousin James. Prison has not the power to ruin me. Prison is just something I have to live through.”
Possibly because few felons were transferred from Bristol to Gloucester, Richard and Willy received two days’ notice of their going, a bare week into January.
“You can take whatever ye can carry,” said Walter the chief gaoler when they were brought into his presence, “not a fleabite more. Ye’re not allowed a cart or barrow.”
He did not say whereabouts they were to start their journey, nor what kind of conveyance they would inhabit, and Richard did not ask. Willy—dying to ask—was too busy wincing at the pain of Richard’s foot on top of his.
The truth was that Walter was very sorry to see the end of Richard Morgan, who had brought him a very nice profit over the three months of his incarceration. His relatives fed both him and Insell, which meant that Walter had an extra tuppence a day; his father sent a gallon jug of good rum to his office once a week; and his cousin the fancy druggist regularly dropped a crown into Walter’s cupped hand. Had it not been for these gratuities, he would have deemed Richard Morgan a potentially violent madman and sent him to be locked up in St. Peter’s Hospital out of harm’s way until Gloucester demanded him. He really was mad!
Every day he washed his entire body with soap and freezing water from the pipe—he wiped his bum on a rag and then washed it—he hovered over the privy rather than sat on it—he kept his hair shorn—he never visited the taproom—he spent most of his time reading the books his cousin the rector of St. James’s brought him—and, maddest act of all, every day he filled a great thick stone basin with water from the pipe and drank what dripped out of it into a brass dish underneath. When Walter had demanded to know what he thought he was doing, he answered that he was turning water into wine as at the wedding feast. Mad! A March hare weren’t in it!
What the two days’ grace meant to Richard was a chance to make his stay in Gloucester Gaol more comfortable.
Cousin James-of-the-clergy brought him a new greatcoat. “As you see, your cousin Elizabeth”—who was his wife—“has sewn a thick lining of wool into your coat, Richard, and given ye two sorts of gloves. The leather ones have no fingertips, the knitted ones do. And I have packed the pockets of the greatcoat.”
No wonder it was so heavy. Both pockets contained books.
“I ordered them from London through Sendall’s,” Cousin James-of-the-clergy explained, “on the thinnest paper, and I tried not to visit you with too much religion. Just a Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.” He paused. “Bunyan is a Baptist, if that can be called a religion, but I think that Pilgrim’s Progress is a great book, so I put it in. And Milton.”
There were also a volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies, one of his comedies, and John Donne’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives.
Richard took the Reverend James’s hand and held it to his cheek, eyes closed. Seven books, none very big, so thin was the paper, so flexible the cloth binding. “Between the coat, the gloves, the Bible, Bunyan, Shakespeare and Plutarch, ye’ve managed to care for my body, my soul and my mind. I cannot thank you enough.”
Cousin James-the-druggist concentrated on Richard’s health. “A new stone for your drip apparatus, though do not change it until ye have to—it is just as well the stone is not much heavier than pumice, eh? Oil of tar and some new, very hard-wearing soap—ye go through soap too fast, Richard, too fast! Some of my special asphalt ointment—’twill heal anything from an ulcer to psoriasis. Ink and paper—I have wired the cork down so the bottle cannot leak. And do look at these, Richard!” he burbled, as always delighted out of a slough of despond by some new device. “They are called ‘nibs’ because they perform the same function as the tip of a trimmed quill, and they slide into the steel end of this wooden handle. I imported them from Italy, though they were made in Araby—geese are few and far between in Araby, it seems. Another razor, just in case. A big tin of malt for when ye do not get fruit or green vegetables—it prevents the scurvy. And rags, rags, rags. Between my wife and your mother, the drapers are out of sheets. A roll of lint and some styptic. And a bottle of my patented tonic, to which I have added a drachm of gold so that ye do not break out in boils. If ye get boils or carbuncles after ye’ve no tonic left, chew some lead shot for a few days. What is not padded with rags is padded with clothes.” Busy packing the chest, he frowned. “I fear ye’ll have to stuff some of it into your greatcoat pockets, Richard.”
