“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.
He returned to the felons’ common-room to find Lizzie Lock vigorously defending his box from Isaac Rogers the highwayman.
“Leave her and my belongings alone,” said Richard curtly.
“Make me!” said Rogers with a snarl, shaping up.
“Oh, piss off, do! Ye’re a tub of lard I would eat at one sitting,” said Richard, his tone as weary as it was unintimidated. “Just go away! I am a peaceful man by name of Richard Morgan, and this lady is under my protection.” He put his arm about Lizzie’s waist while she shrank against him gleefully. “There are other women here. Bother one of them.”
Rogers weighed him carefully and decided discretion was the better part of valor. Had Morgan betrayed a trace of fear it would have gone differently, but the bugger had no fear in him. Too calm, too contained. Fellows like that fought like cats, teeth and nails and boots, and they were agile. So he slouched away with a shrug, leaving Richard to sit on his box and perch Lizzie on his knee.
“When do they feed us?” he asked. What a clever female she was! No fear that she would misinterpret his gallantry. It suited Lizzie Lock to have a protector who did not desire her.
“Soon for dinner,” she answered. “It being Sunday, we get new bread, meat, a hunk of cheese, turnips and cabbage. No butter or jam, but there is plenty to eat. Felons got their own kitchen, through there”—she pointed to the far end of the room—“and Cook will issue ye with a wooden trencher and a tin mug. Supper is more bread, small beer and cabbage soup.”
“Is there a taproom?”
“What, in here? Fond of the booze, are ye, Richard my love?”
“No. I drink naught but small beer or water. I wondered.”
“Simmons—his nickname is Happy and he is an under-gaoler—will bring booze in for ye for a penny profit. That is when ye’ll have to watch yon Isaac. He is savage in his cups, is Ike.”
“Drunk men are clumsy, I have dealt with them all my life.”
By the end of February there was nothing that Richard did not know about Gloucester Gaol, including all its felon inmates, whom proximity rendered intimates rather than acquaintances. Fourteen of them were up for trial at the Lent assizes; the rest were already judged and sentenced, mostly to transportation. And of those fourteen, three were women—Mary (known as Maisie) Harding, charged with receiving stolen goods—Betty Mason, charged with stealing a purse containing fifteen guineas from a house in Henbury—and Bess Parker, charged with housebreaking in North Nibley and the theft of two linen garments. Bess Parker had formed a firm relationship with a 1783 felon, Ned Pugh; Betty Mason had bewitched an under-gaoler named Johnny. Both were due to have babies at any moment.
What a fine little world is ours! Richard reflected wryly. A common-room one can hardly stand up in, and, when a gaoler opens the gate, a disgusting men’s dormitory up the steps. He had become quite case-hardened; stripped and bathed at the pump in an airless black cell without regard for the women, washed his bum rags under it with calm unimpaired, and filtered his drinking water through his dripstone under the gaze of more than three dozen pairs of incredulous eyes. A degree of selfishness had crept into him, for he made no attempt to share his purified water with either Lizzie or Willy; the dripstone was slow, taking an hour to produce two pints of filtered water. Nor did he share his soap or rags. What few pence he disbursed from his hoard went to Maisie, the laundress, for washing his underdrawers, shirts and stockings; as for breeches and other outer wear—well, they simply stank of sweat.
Maisie was the only one of the women without a protector and dispensed her favors gratis, whereas two or three of the others could be had for a mug of gin. When the urge visited a couple, they lay down on whatever vacant piece of floor they could find, or, failing that, stood against the wall. Not an erotic business, as clothes stayed on and the most a curious individual could see was a glimpse of a fleshy pole or hairy mound, though usually not even that. What fascinated Richard most was that none of the copulating happened in one of the adjacent cells; everybody seemed terrified of the dark.
