“I understand you.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a shilling, which I handed to him.

“Well, now,” he said, with a monkey’s grin of strong yellow teeth, “this is as much as a fellow could ask for. I think you may have found yourself a friend, friend. If you’re so inclined, I could take you to the Goose and Wheel myself and point out Greenbill to you. He ain’t no friend of mine, and I wouldn’t want him to see me there, but I can point you all the same. Provided you buy me something to drink once we’re there.”

This matter began to have the taste of something I could complete within a day or two, and that was exactly what I needed to help return me to the rhythms of my work. “I’d be most grateful,” I told Littleton. “And if this Greenbill turns out to be our poet, or leads me to him, there will be another shilling in it for you, sure enough.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” he told me. He then took his empty pewter mug and placed it in a small sack by the side of his chair. “ ’Twere mine, once,” he explained. “Or one like it.”

I shrugged. “I can assure you I have no concern for any mugs you might take from Mr. Ufford’s kitchen.”

“Right kind of you,” he said. He reached across the table to my half-full mug, drained it, and placed it with the other in his sack. “Right kind of you indeed.”

CHAPTER 3

ONCE JUDGE ROWLEY had pronounced my conviction, I knew I would not be permitted to return to the relative comfort of my room on the Master’s Side- a privilege that had cost dearly but had been worth the coin to keep me away from the dangerous masses of the prison. But no matter how much money he has at his command, any man condemned to hang must reside in the hold, the particular part of the prison designated for such unfortunates, whose ranks I had now joined. While I understood I would not be enjoying the most comfortable of accommodations, I had no reason to anticipate the gravity of the judge’s intentions. When we arrived at the cell in the dark of Newgate’s hellish cellar, one of the turnkeys ordered me to hold out my wrists for shackling.

“For what reason?” I demanded.

“For the reason of preventing escape. The judge has ordered it, so that’s what gets done.”

“For how long am I to be shackled?” I demanded.

“Until such time as you are hanged, I believe.”

“That is six weeks away. Is it not cruel to shackle a man for six weeks without cause?”

“You should have thought of that before killing that spark,” he told me.

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then you should have thought of that before being nabbed for doing what you didn’t do. Now, hold out your wrists. You needn’t be what they call conscious, I might point out, or without a blow to the head, in order to be shackled right and proper. I’ve a mind to knock you if you don’t do as I say, so I can tell my boys I exchanged blows with Ben Weaver.”

“If trading blows is your plan,” I offered, “then I shall take your offer willingly. But somehow I think you haven’t a fair exchange in mind.” With the gifts given by my pretty stranger clutched tightly in my palm, I held out my wrists and allowed this blackguard to shackle them together. Next, I was made to sit in a wooden chair in the center of the room. Here my legs were bound together in a manner similar to my wrists, but these shackles were attached by a chain to a staple rising from the floor. I had only a few feet of slack with which I might hobble about as best I could.

Once the turnkeys left me there, I had an opportunity to examine my surroundings. The room was not overly small, some five feet wide and ten feet long. It offered no more than the chair on which I sat, a rough mattress, barely in reach of the chain, a very large pot for my necessary business (its size suggesting that it would be emptied none too often), a table, and a small fireplace, now unlit despite the cold. At the very top of one wall was a small and exceedingly narrow window that just peeked above the ground layer. It permitted only a few rays of daylight to penetrate, but this was hardly an escape route, as a cat could not squeeze its way through those slits. There were two windows of a much larger kind that overlooked the hallway, though still not large enough to permit a man to pass.

I breathed in deeply to sigh, an act I regretted at once, for the air was exceedingly unwholesome and stank of condemned bodies nearby as well as those who had long since passed through. It smelled of chamber pots in need of emptying and those in need of being mopped. It smelled of vomit and blood and sweat.

The sounds were of no more comfort. I could hear the nearby clicking of rat claws on the stone floor and the scrape in my ear of the lice that had not given me a moment to adjust to my new surroundings before latching onto my person. Somewhere in the distance a woman sobbed, and perhaps a bit closer: drawn-out laughter, treacly with madness. My closet was, in short, a dark and desolate place, and the turnkeys had not left me alone for more than a minute or two before I began plotting my departure from it.

I am no master of escapes, but I had broken into a goodly number of houses in my younger days, after my career as a pugilist had been forced to a period by a leg injury. I therefore knew a thing or two about the use of a lockpick. I took the device that the pretty stranger had pressed into my hand and held it in my palm, as though its weight could tell me something of its utility. It did not, but I was determined that the lady’s efforts should not be in vain. True, I had no ideas of who she might be or why she should have gone to such lengths to aid me, but I thought it better to address those matters after I was free.

I therefore set myself to the task of digging into the lock of my shackles. My wrists being manacled together, I had none of the dexterity a housebreaker enjoys, but I had not the fear of being happened upon either, so with careful application I was able to insert the pick into the lock and feel out the mechanisms. It took some time to be able to find the spring, and more time to activate it, but I managed to trigger the release, and in less than a quarter hour too. What a glorious sound, the muted snap of metal upon metal, and the musical slackening of the chains! My hands were now free, and after rubbing my wrists for the few moments that I indulged in this new liberty, I began work on my feet.

This was slightly more difficult because of the angle, because in just fifteen minutes what little light graced the room had begun to fade, and because my fingers had begun to grow tired from such precise labors. But soon enough I was entirely free of my chains.

There was little enough reason to rejoice, however. Though I could now move around my cell at liberty, I could go nowhere, and if my state of release was discovered I should find myself in a worse position than that in which I began. Now I would have to work quickly. I looked around my cell in the growing darkness. The onset of evening would be an advantage, of course, providing cover for my actions. It nevertheless increased my feeling of melancholy.

Why had such a thing happened to me? How could it be that I was now condemned to hang for a crime I never committed? I sat down and put my face in my hands. I was on the verge of weeping, but then I at once chastised myself for giving in to despair. I was free of my chains, I had tools, and I had strength. This prison, I declared to myself with spurious determination, would not detain me long.

“Who’s that over there, clanking around so?” I heard a voice, thick and distorted, through the walls of the prison.

“I’m new,” I said.

“I know you’re new. I heard you come in, didn’t I? I asked who you were, not about your freshness. Are you a fish or a man? When your mama set a steaming cake before you, you wanted to know if it was seed or plum, not when she first started to bake it.”