And now the maids have come, with steaming coppers held high, and pronounced the water as yet too hot for my liking. So I have drawn out my journal, and put pen to paper, in the hope of fixing indelibly my impression of that hellish place in which I spent but a few hours. The horror shall pass from my mind with time; but I would retain something of it here, to harden my resolve when despair at Isobel's fate threatens to overcome me. I know her to be innocent, and will not suffer her to spend a minute more than she must in so terrible a hole.

Mr. Cranley was as good as his word, and arrived not long after the breakfast hour — half-past eight, by the great clock that relentlessly chimes the quarters in Scargrave House's entry. His face wore a dubious aspect, and he would have dissuaded me from my visit; but that firmness of purpose, where I know myself to be right, overruled all objection.

I wore my most serviceable gown, a warm wool worsted of dark blue, and my stoutest boots, as though intending a walk over country stiles; and of these I read the barrister's approval as he surveyed my form.

“A clergyman's daughter, you say?” He smiled despite the sombre nature of our errand. “I should almost have thought your father a Colonel, Miss Austen, and yourself well hardened to the privations of campaign.”

“Parish work may be as arduous, and its contests as bitter, as the mounting of a siege,” I replied, pulling on my gloves. “Have you never been forced, Mr. Cranley, to parcel out the parts in a Christmas pageant, and suffer calumny and abuse for the neglect of some worthy's darling child? But enough. The Countess awaits us.”

“Her ladyship cannot do much else,” he replied grimly, assisting me into his carriage, “more's the pity. Had she occupation for her thoughts, she might bear her circumstances better.”

I stopped, half in the carriage, half out, and stared at him in consternation. “You mean she has nothing of an amusing nature by her?”

“Amusing? I should think not.”

I turned abruptly and stepped down, my feet as swift as my thoughts. “Do you wait a moment, Mr. Cranley,” I declared. “I know the very article to cheer her.”

WE WERE NOT LONG ON OUR WAY TO NEWGATE, IT BEING situated to the east of Portman Square, near the old walls of the City. In a different time, the Earl and the Countess might have been conveyed to the Tower, there to be lodged in chilly dignity appropriate to their station, though offering no more comfort than the prison thrown up in its shadow. As we approached Newgate, I quailed to think of the scaffold that might be erected before its doors, should Isobel be condemned to die. A public execution, with all the humiliation and popular carousing that habitually attends a Hanging Day, was too horrible to contemplate. I turned to Mr. Cranley. “Is it likely, my good sir — if it be that we fail in our efforts to prove the Countess's innocence — must she certainly hang?”

For the space of several heartbeats, the barrister offered no answer, his eyes upon the gloomy walls of the approaching prison. At last he turned to me with sober mien. “The courts are loath to impose such a sentence upon a woman,” he replied, “but the deliberate murder of one's husband — particularly a gentleman of the Earl's station — is not a clergyable offence.[40] I fear, Miss Austen, that we have no alternative but to prove the Countess's innocence. And the Earl's as well.”

The carriage loitered before Newgate's stone gate, and Mr. Cranley jumped out, with a hand for me as I descended. We stopped an instant in silence before those dreadful walls, overlaid with writhing gargoyles and hung with chains; and then a wicket was slid back in the massive oak itself. We were treated to a beefy visage, with a patch over one eye, and a mouth possessed of very few teeth.

“Do you wait a moment, Miss Austen, while I speak to the porter,” Mr. Cranley told me, and approached the prison gate. His conversation was swiftly conducted — through the passage of coin from his hand to the other's — and the heavy gate swung open. We were led within the courtyard, cobbled and streaming from the residue of London's fogs; I suffered to think of Isobel's arrival here, a lonely object of contempt, without much of hope to sustain her. It was but another moment before we gained admittance from a trusty at the prison door, and were inside.”

How to relate the scene that greeted us?

A narrow, windowless, low-ceilinged place, lit only by torchlight, the better to obscure years of grime and a scurrying at our feet — undoubtedly from rats. An air so thick with smoke and odour as to be suffocating. A repeated clanging about the ears, from bolts drawn back or driven home — Kr, worse yet, from manacles shaken in despair. I looked about me furtively, not wishing to appear shocked, but Mr. Cranley divined my emotion.

“There is time yet to go back,” he said gently. “I would not think less of you, Miss Austen, did you call for my carriage.”

“Nonsense,” I replied, and affected an air of greater strength than I assuredly felt.

We were placed in the safekeeping of a man Mr. Cranley addressed as Crow, a peculiar person of stunted appearance, with an enormous nose and a heavy growth of dark hair, much matted. He wore on his person an astonishing number of garments, of varying stuffs and sizes — a veritable rag-picker's fortune, to my untrained eye. I learned later from Mr. Cranley that it was Crow's custom to buy the clothes of condemned men, piece by piece, in the days before their execution; the poor souls being desperate for some last sustenance, they were willing to barter all that they owned for the promise of good ale and maggotless bread. I am relieved I knew nothing of the origin of our guide's motley wardrobe, while still in his presence; for I fear I could not have repressed my disgust.

Crow conducted us through a passage so dark and narrow, it barely permitted the span of Mr. Cranley's shoulders, and as the walls were damp with mould, I feared for the barrister's good wool coat. Our guide's taper cast flickering shadows as he progressed before us, as comfortable with his lot as one of the Duchess of Wilborough's footmen. We mounted stairs, and followed still more endless corridors, and glimpsed leering faces from occasional barred doors; a fearful babble assailed our ears, part moan, part feverish talk, part muttered curse.

Our guide stopped short before a door, the taper making a grotesquerie of his bulbous nose and thatch of greasy hair. He fumbled at the waists of his many pairs of breeches, and came up with a large key; which, fitted into the lock, succeeded in turning the bolt. I peered timidly about me. Could Isobel really be lodged within?

She was.

Crow threw wide the heavy door and preceded us into the chamber, his face set in a lascivious grin; and upon following Mr. Cranley across the threshold, I quickly perceived the reason.

All manner of strumpet and pickpocket and gypsy beggar were housed within the room — women blowsy and ragged, tall and short, comely and fearsome to look upon. Some seven were confined together in a space perhaps fifteen feet square; they huddled upon the ground in attitudes of dejection, or stood brazenly in groups, conversing with as much ease as though walking the Strand of a Saturday afternoon. One of these last, a snaggle-toothed hag, sallied up to Crow and ran her fingers through his dirty locks, with a leer to match his own.

“Eh, luv,” she cackled, “whattuv you brought us tidday? Summat nice?”

“Leave off, Nance,” the gaoler said, thrusting her backwards with a cuff to the head; “I've business with the lady.”

“The lady, is it? Ho ho.” Nance ran her eyes the length of my gown, with remarkable impertinence for one of her station, and spat upon the ground. “That's for ladies, that is.”