Chapter 49 #3
A short time later, Sebastian was holding a handkerchief to his nose as he followed a turnkey down the dark, tunnellike passage that led to Newgate’s condemned cells.
The men arrested last night and this morning hadn’t been condemned yet, of course.
But the Home Office wanted them kept isolated from ordinary prisoners, and yesterday’s hangings had freed up four of the special cells.
“Ye got yerself a visitor,” snapped the turnkey as he threw open the door to one of the frigid, stone-walled, windowless holes. “Ye mind yer manners, ye hear?”
Adam York looked up from where he sat cross-legged on the tiny cell’s filthy straw mattress, trying to read a newspaper in the feeble light cast by a small lamp. At the sight of Sebastian, he pushed to his feet, his expression surprised and wary. “My lord?”
“Please, sit,” said Sebastian, tucking the handkerchief away as he nodded dismissal to the turnkey. The coffeehouse keeper’s clothes were torn, his bruised face crusted with dried blood, one eye swollen half-shut. “Looks like they roughed you up a bit.”
“Just a bit,” said York, wincing as he sank gratefully back down on the torn mattress.
Mattresses were not free in Newgate, which meant that either York or his wife had paid for this foul-smelling, vermin-infested thing.
Food also needed to be paid for; anyone unable to pay was forced to subsist on filthy water, a small allotment of moldy bread, and thin gruel.
Men, women, and children had all been known to die of starvation in His Majesty’s prisons.
And the private prisons were even worse.
“I hear they’re planning to move us to the Tower,” said York, his head falling back as he stared up at Sebastian. “Is that true?”
“I understand they’re talking about it, yes.”
The coffeehouse owner gave a faint, disbelieving shake of his head.
“Imagine that. Me, the son of a simple innkeeper, locked up in the bloody Tower of London like a disgraced earl or discarded queen. I guess that’s the one measure of equality Liverpool and his lot are willing to give us—the right to have our guts pulled out and our heads chopped off like the Duke of Monmouth or something. ”
Sebastian studied the older man’s bruised, tensely held face. “It might actually work in your favor. They’re going to find it a lot harder to convict you of treason than a simple charge of aggravated riot.”
“Maybe. But they don’t castrate a man and burn his private parts in front of him for aggravated riot, do they?” York flexed his bruised shoulders and winced again. “And we call ourselves a civilized nation.”
Sebastian said, “The treason charge also gives you the right to defense counsel, which means you’ll get an actual trial.
If the government is planning to rely on John Castle’s testimony, it won’t be difficult to prove he’s been working as their spy.
And there are dozens of men, including Henry Hunt, who can testify to the part Castle played in instigating the riot. ”
“If they don’t charge Hunt with treason, too.
” York nodded to the newspaper he’d tossed on the mattress beside him.
“My wife, Mary, brought me that this morning. It’s all garbage, what they’re saying.
We weren’t planning a reenactment of the taking of the bloody Bastille.
” He paused, then said, “Well, maybe the Watsons and Castle were. But not the rest of us. We already had another meeting set for February!”
“I know.”
York was silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he chewed thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Mary also tells me people are saying Lord Bridgewood, his son, and Sir Samuel Toole were all killed last night—murdered—even though it ain’t been in the papers yet. Is that true?”
“They were found dead, yes,” said Sebastian.
York cocked his head to one side as if assessing the implications of Sebastian’s careful phraseology.
Sebastian said, “You told me once that Gilbert Keebles, Marcus Toole, and their friends had been allowed to get away with murder in the past. Given that they’re all dead now, if there’s a reason to keep what happened quiet, I can’t see it.”
York hesitated a moment, as if thinking it over. Then he shook his head. “It’s not my story to tell.”
Sebastian was seated at his desk, trying to pass the time by writing to his estate agent about finding a farm family willing to take in a likable orphan named Jigger, when Emmanuel Royston-Jones came to see him.
Looking haggard and drawn, with dark circles around his sunken eyes and a greenish tinge to his face, the younger man drew up just inside the entrance to the library, then waited while Morey bowed himself out before saying in a rush, “Ciana tells me I owe it to you to come and personally let you know I’m still alive.
” He hesitated, a faint flush lending a touch of healthier color to his cheeks.
“Somehow it never occurred to me that people might think I was dead. I mean, it’s not like I planned to be gone for long.
I just…wanted to get away. Blot out the world for maybe one night.
Except that one night somehow turned into two, and then three…
” He swallowed. “I don’t even know the girl’s name.
All I can remember is her holding my head up while I puked out my guts in her chamber pot. ”
Sebastian came out from behind his desk. “You’re lucky you lived to tell the tale. Have you seen your father?”
“Not yet. I’m on my way there now.” He paused, bringing up a hand to run his fingers through his dark hair.
“The newsboys are out on every corner, you know, blowing their horns for the special editions Fleet Street’s published on these new murders.
They’re saying some Grub Street forger killed them—killed them all.
But that’s not what really happened, is it? ”
Sebastian met the younger man’s gaze and shook his head. “No.”
“I realize I probably don’t deserve to hear it, but, well, I would like to know the truth.”
Sebastian nodded. “Come sit by the fire.”
He left some of the details out of his telling, but not many.
Afterward, Emmanuel thrust up from his chair and went to stand at the windows overlooking the rainy street, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Then he turned and looked back at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling with the agitation of his breathing.
“You know how you asked what happened last summer that ended my friendship with Toole and the others?”
“Yes.”
Emmanuel looked away again. “It’s not something I’m proud of.
We’d been out at Merlin’s Cave one night and were leaving when Toole spotted a ragged old man sleeping on the banks of the reservoir.
For some reason, it riled him up, and he started kicking the man, yelling at him to wake up and move on.
I told him to cut it out, but, rather than back me up, the others just went over and joined in.
The man was trying to get away from them, but the bank was muddy from a recent rain and he kept slipping and half falling down.
Then he lost his footing completely and pitched into the water.
He was drunk, and it was obvious he couldn’t swim—he was splashing around, hollering for help, and his head kept going under.
I can’t swim, either, but Toole and the others could.
I kept yelling at them to do something, please.
But they just stood there laughing—laughing so hard they were having to hold each other up.
I finally jumped in myself.” He paused. “I honestly thought I was going to drown, too. I don’t know how I managed to haul him into the shallows, but I’d waited too long.
He was barely breathing. I remember kneeling there in the water, holding that dying man in my arms and begging my friends to help me. ”
“What did they do?”
“They told me to stop acting like a bloody plebeian. They said I was embarrassing. Then they turned around and…left.” His jaw hardened.
“I had to run all the way to that coffeehouse in St. John Street before I could find someone to help me. The owner, he ran back up the hill with hot coffee and blankets and got some of his customers to help us carry the old man down and lay him by the fire. But by then it was too late.”
He paused again, and this time it was a moment before he could continue.
“They might not have deliberately killed that old man, but they did kill him. And I think what got to me more than anything else was that his death…it simply didn’t matter to them.
When I confronted them about it afterward, it was obvious they felt no guilt.
No horror. No shame. They simply didn’t care.
It was a shattering realization, that I could be friends for so many years with men who were basically… soulless.”
He turned, his gaze once more going to the street outside.
He said, “Ciana told me about a fifteen-year-old girl who died because of what Keebles, Toole, and the others did to her. I keep thinking that maybe…maybe if I’d spoken up, told someone about what they’d done to that old man, the girl would still be alive today.
That maybe none of this would have happened. ”
“Perhaps,” said Sebastian, although he doubted it. He was silent for a moment, trying to fit what Emmanuel had told him into what he already knew. But something was still missing. He said, “How did Ciana know about the girl?”
Something flickered in the younger man’s eyes, something he hid behind carefully lowered lids. “I don’t know.”
Standing up from beside the fire, Sebastian went to retrieve the Celtic wolf carving he’d left lying on his desk. “You’ll see this gets back to her?” he said, holding the piece out to Emmanuel.