“So it would seem that you will serve out your time in Gloucester. Rest assured, however, that as soon as I hear anything, I will pass it on to you. Dick says that you have organized yourself with what Cousin James-the-druggist calls a ‘cool kind of passion.’ ”

His answer had to wait until Sunday, when he took possession of the end of the table Old Mother Hubbard had installed in the felons’ common-room just before the assizes and not removed after them, on the theory that it gave some felons an extra storey to perch upon when the place was overcrowded. As if it knew times of undercrowding.

A rash of visitors had broken out, envoys of a friend of Mr. Pitt’s named Jeremy Bentham, at present touring Russia with the intention of writing a legal code for the Empress Catherine, but also the author of a treatise on the virtues and vices of setting felons to hard labor on public works, and exponent of a new kind of prison-in-the-round. His envoys popped in and out of the gaol inspecting it minutely and shaking their heads gloomily, gazing at the extensions its inmates were erecting and muttering about its all having to be pulled down again. Square! Why did the minds of men think square when round had no corners?

“I would rather be in Italy than in Gloucester Gaol, Jem, of that I can assure you.

“Of Ceely Trevillian and the affair at the distillery I can say no more than that I had the misfortune to run up against a man of birth and brain with no better outlet for his talents than intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation. He belongs on the stage, where he would have out-acted Kemp, Mrs. Siddons and Garrick combined. My only consolation is that when Cave and Thorne have arrived at a settlement with the Excise Office, I will be able to pay my debts and ensure that the Cousins James are not out of pocket when they buy me more things. I am never without a new book, though reading some of them is painful, as Clifton and the Hotwells keep cropping up. Two places I would rather not be reminded of, even by an Evelina or a Humphry Clinker. Not so much because of William Henry or Ceely as because of Annemarie Latour, with whom I sinned grievously. I can see the exasperation at my prudishness on your ugly face from here, but you were not there, nor could you have loved the man I became with her. Pleasure meant too much. Can you understand that? And if you cannot, how can I make you? I was a bull, a stallion. I rutted, I did not make love. And I loathed the object of my animality, who was an animal too.

“In Gloucester Gaol we are all in together, men and women—and children. Though it is a place of more fucking than suckling. The babies usually die, poor little creatures. And their poor mothers, who constantly carry and bear for nothing. At first the presence of the women appalled me, but as time has gone on I have come to realize that they make Gloucester Gaol endurable. Without them, we would be a collection of men brutalized beyond recognition.

“My own woman is Lizzie Lock, who has been here since the beginning of 1783 for stealing hats. When she sees one she fancies, she pinches it. Ours is a platonic friendship, we neither make love nor rut. I protect her from other men and she protects my box of belongings whilst I am laboring. Jem, if solvency permits it, would you find a grand hat for Lizzie? Red, or red and black, preferably with feathers. It would cast her into ecstasies.

“I must go. Even my elevated status in here does not guarantee tenure of so much table for a whole Sunday afternoon. That is the oddest part about it, Jem. For some reason (possibly that I am deemed mad) I notice that I am, for want of a better word, respected. Write to me sometimes, please.”

*    *    *

Cousin James-the-druggist came to see Richard in August, loaded with a new dripstone, more rags and clothes, medicines, books.

“But keep your present dripstone going, Richard, for I see no evidence that it is tainting. The more spare stones ye have, the better, and I have brought ye a good stout sack for surplus items. The Gloucester water is purer by far than any Bristol can produce, even from the Bishop’s feather off Jacob’s Well.” He was very ill at ease, talking for the sake of talking, and finding it very hard to meet Richard’s eyes.

“There was no real reason to make this journey in such hot weather, Cousin James,” said Richard gently. “Tell me the bad news.”

“We have finally heard from Mr. Hyde in Chancery Lane. Sir James Eyre got around to your petition for the King’s Mercy on the ninth of last month, or at least that is the date on his letter to Lord Sydney. He denied ye mercy, Richard, and most emphatically. There is no doubt in his mind that ye conspired with that woman to rob Ceely Trevillian. Even though she was never found.”

“The damning witness who was not there,” said Richard under his breath. “Not there, but believed.”

“So that is it, my poor dear fellow. We have exhausted all our avenues. Your reward is safe, however. It cannot be garnished because it is not related to the crime for which ye were convicted. I know ye’ve a few guineas, but when next I come I will bring ye a new box with a hollow long side to it—tops and bottoms are more likely to be examined than sides, I am told. It will contain gold coins packed in lint so that, no matter how hard the box is shaken or rapped, they will make no noise. The lint also sounds solid.”

Richard took both his hands and held them strongly. “I know I keep saying it, but I cannot thank you enough, Cousin James. What would I have become without you?”

“A bloody sight dirtier, Richard my love,” said Lizzie Lock after Cousin James-the-druggist had gone. “ ’Tis the apothecary gives ye your drips, soaps, oil of tar and all the rest of your popish ceremonials. Ye remind me of a priest saying Mass.”

“Aye, he is a fussy bugger,” said Bill Whiting, smiling. “It ain’t necessary, Richard my love—look at the rest of us.”

“Talking of buggery, Bill, I saw you sneaking around my sheep the other day,” said Betty Mason, who kept a flock for Old Mother Hubbard. “Leave them alone.”

“What chance do I have to bugger anybody except Jimmy and Richard my love? And they will not be in it. I hear, by the by, that all our lugging of rocks is to go for naught—Old Mother Hubbard says there is talk of a new style for the new prison.”

“I hear that too,” said Richard, sopping up the last of his soup with a piece of stale bread.

Jimmy Price sighed. “We are like whosit thingummabob who kept on having to roll the boulder up the hill but it always came down again. Christ, it would be nice to work for some purpose.” He glanced across to where Ike Rogers was hunched at the far end of the table the old brigade defended against all presumptuous comers. “Ike, ye have to eat. Otherwise Richard my love will have your soup too, the hungry bugger. I ain’t noticed the other five gallows birds off their food, nor worried much either. Eat, Ike, eat! Ye will not hang, I swear it.”

Ike vouchsafed no reply; the blustering bully was no more. Highwaymen were considered the aristocrats of criminals, but Ike could not seem to come to terms with his fate or adopt the die-hard attitude of the other five in similar case.

Richard went to sit on the bench beside him and put an arm about his shoulders. “Eat, Ike,” he said cheerfully.

“I am not hungry.”

“Jimmy is right. Ye will not go to the gallows. It is over two years since anybody hanged at Gloucester, though many have been sentenced to it. Old Mother Hubbard needs us to work to get his thirty pence a week for each of us. If we do not work, he gets but fourteen pence.”

“I do not want to die, I do not want to die!”

“Nor will you, Ike. Now drink your soup.”