Alms for Oblivion (27 page)

Then I thought that I should examine the door more carefully. In the very feeble candlelight I noticed what hadn’t been obvious before, that the door was bolted top and bottom. An odd
prison, this place, where the entrances were secured on the wrong side, as if to stop people getting
in
. Then I thought of the Counter’s previous incarnation as St Margaret’s
church. In a church you sometimes have to keep people out, but you very rarely need to keep them in, much as some parsons might like to. Anyway this was more to do with the sexton than the parson
since it would have been one of the sexton’s tasks to ensure that the pyx and plate and other valuables were protected from thieves and he’d naturally bolt and lock up from inside
before leaving the church, probably by an unobtrusive door in the crypt or vestry. I remembered as a boy accompanying John, my father’s sexton, while he made his rounds, locking, bolting,
fastening. ‘Fast bind, fast find’ was the proverb that governed in this case, as it did for Master Benwell in my old lodgings. Therefore the church doors had to be secured on the
inside.

All this crossed my mind in a few instants. I don’t suppose that I’d been in this chamber with the snoring, farting guard for more than half a minute.

Swiftly I slid back the bolts, top and bottom. My luck held. The bolts, well greased, moved without a scrape or a squeak. The guard rumbled on, heedless, untroubled. I pulled at the door and it
swung inwards. The room beyond was dark – and empty. There was no guard excavating the dirt from under his nails at knife-point. There was no one there at all.

Now one more room remained to pass through, the outer porch. This chamber was occupied. A thin line of light was visible under the far door. A sudden bark of laughter from beyond it made me
jump. In the person of Master Topcourt I strode forward. I breathed a quick prayer to the patron saint of players (St Genesius, if you’re interested). With my heart thudding in my chest, I
knocked on the door and opened it.

Two guards were present, the same two in fact who’d been sitting in the porch on the day I was inducted into the Counter prison. They were still smoking their long-stemmed pipes, still
perched on stools either side of a chest on which lay a scatter of greasy cards and little piles of coin. For all I knew they hadn’t stirred for the last four days, except to answer the calls
of nature. This room was better lit but there was an obscuring, eye-itching fug of pipe-smoke and chimney smoke.

The lantern-jawed guard eventually glanced up.

Pronouncing the word ‘Topcourt’, I held out the precious piece of paper, the ‘ticket of leave’. My hand shook slightly.

The guard was evidently used to such documents for he gave it a fairly cursory glance with his bloodshot eyes before passing it across to his gaming partner. I doubted that either of them could
read, although they recognized the stamp of officialdom when they saw it. This other man laid his cards face down, screwed up his eyes and held the portion of the document containing the
magistrate’s signature and seal under his bulbous, spongy nose. He sniffed deeply at the wax seal, as if he might thus inhale the majesty of the law. So far not a word had been spoken apart
from my giving a false name.

Then the second gaoler grunted and handed the paper back to the first fellow and returned his attention to his hand. I licked my lips and attempted a smile – because a prisoner departing
from a gaol should surely be glad – but it was only a grimace that came out.

“How do you call yourself, master?” said Lantern-jaw.

“William Topcourt.”

“Well, what have
you
done?”

Done? What had I done? For a moment I couldn’t remember.

“Women,” I said.

The gaoler with the spongy nose flicked his eyes in my direction with interest. I stroked my grimy cheek, seeing how my uneasiness could be turned to advantage.

“What’s your offence, man?” said Lantern-jaw, still holding tight to my ticket of leave with one hand and using the other to point me out with the stem of his pipe.

“Women are my offence, I say. Three times over. I am married three times over. William Topcourt is my name.”

“Oh, we have heard of you,” said the other gaoler. “You are a most notorious adulterer.”

“A limb-lifter and an arch fornicator.”

“They’ll be making a ballad out of you next.”

I looked abashed, as if the prospect of fame was unpleas-ing. The room grew hotter. The folds of my coat or cloak hung heavy about me.

“So cheer yourself . . . Topcourt. Leave those long faces behind.”

“You do not have three wives waiting for you outside, sir,” I said, trying to imitate Topcourt’s resigned intonation.

“Are they outside?”

“Round a dark corner, I expect,” I said.

“You’d be better off locked up, wouldn’t you then,” said Sponge-nose.

I gestured helplessly towards the signed and sealed paper as if to say, it’s out of my hands now.

“My wives, they think otherwise and have purchased my liberty.”

“It’s not you should be locked up anyway, Master Top-court,” said the first gaoler.

“I am mostly of your mind, sir,” I said mournfully.

“Not you but your pintle should be locked up, out of women’s reach.”

“That one is truly a case for a prick-case,” said the other.

Now I smiled, smiled weakly, as Topcourt would have done. There are some men – most men perhaps – who’d be glad enough to have their hardihood with three wives celebrated and
even laughed over but I judged that William Topcourt wasn’t among them.

“One thing, master,” said Lantern-jaw. “Enlighten me now. Which of your three wives is going to couch with you tonight? Or is it more than one that you’ll be
having?”

I saw the glint of envy, of prurient curiosity, in his bloated eyes. And the other one’s nose would have been all a-quiver if it hadn’t already been so swollen up and spongy. Be
careful, I told myself, don’t overplay this. These men are quite capable of keeping you inside out of spite, in order to stop you couching with anyone at all.

“That depends,” I said, “on which of my wives has the biggest – ”

“Thingy?”

“Nonny-no?”

“The biggest stick,” I said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but I won’t be ‘having’ anyone tonight. You wouldn’t credit the brutal
treatment I will receive at the hands of my wives. You would not think that the ladies could be so barbarous.”

I shivered, despite the heat and the enveloping cloak. I stroked furiously at my cheek and then tugged at my nose.

“Like I said, you’re safer in here,” said the second gaoler.

“I must take my punishment like a man,” I said. “I am a sinner. I have done wrong and cannot avoid retribution. It is my fate. Though my wives beat me with rods and canes I
will not cry out. I am a changed man and walk with God now.”

As I’d half hoped, all this talk of punishment and sinning appeared to make them lose interest. They would be receiving no bedchamber titbits from me. They reached for their cards again
and I cleared my throat and indicated the ticket of leave. Lantern-jaw handed it to me. I shuffled, but shuffled purposefully, in the direction of the double church doors which were the final
barrier between me and the street.

Lantern-jaw waited until Sponge-nose had played his hand and then he played one of his own and only after that did he deposit the remainder of his cards alongside his pipe on the chest. Wearily
he raised himself to his feet. I now saw that a pendulous iron key hung from his waist. He stroked it lasciviously and then waggled it up and down.

“Maybe your wives would like a touch of this, eh, Master Topcourt? Can you speak for them?”

I leaned forward and pretended to inspect his instrument.

“I fear they could not accommodate such a massy engine, sir, and one with so many intricate wards too. I could not hope to compete with it.”

This piece of complimentary filth seemed to do the trick. The gaoler inserted the key – it was large, almost requiring two hands to manoeuvre it – and, rolling his bloodshot eyes at
me, twisted it in the keyhole. Then he seized a great iron ring and pulled back one of the double oak doors, which creaked on its hinges.

I had a glimpse of the outside or, more accurately, a whiff of it. It must have been raining because the sound of pattering drops and the fresh smell of a shower slipped through the half-open
door together with a draught of cold air. It’s odd, but until that moment I hadn’t thought much about getting out of the Counter, only about negotiating the various ante-chambers to it.
Now – with the world only a few feet away from where I was standing – a violent desire to quit this miserable place suddenly overcame me. I only just stopped myself from bolting through
the narrow gap. Instead, pulling my cloak tight about my person and clutching my precious ticket of leave, I went to ease through the space.

And then the lantern-jawed gaoler put his shoulder to the door and closed it once more. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. It had been too easy so far, too straightforward. The door shut with a
thud. Laboriously he retwisted the key in the keyhole.

“Not so quick . . .”

Folding his arms, he leaned against the door. He looked pleased at whatever confusion of expressions I was wearing on my face. Despair – pleading – anger. No acting now. The prize
had been dangled before my face then whisked away.

“Who are you?” said this gaoler.

My stomach lurched. They’d known all the time who I was, these two. They’d been toying with me. For an instant I was on the edge of admitting the truth but I checked myself.

“You know that – that I am William Topcourt.”

“
What
are you, though?” said the other gaoler, who was still occupied with his cards. I took a tiny grain of comfort from the fact that he hadn’t shifted from his perch.
I calculated my chances of springing at the insolent fellow by the entrance, twisting round the great key, tugging the door open and making my escape into the street. No chance. The two of them
would be on me in a trice.

“What am I?” I echoed.

“Describe yourself, William Topcourt,” said Lantern-jaw.

I began to suspect that there was some game going on here, a game to whose rules I wasn’t privy.

“Well, a fornicator, yes, I freely admit it,” I gabbled. “A sinner and a malefactor. A prisoner for my crimes.”

“And who are
we
?” said the man with the cards in his hand.

“You gentlemen are my gaolers,” I said, adding the right note of deference.

“Entitled to . . . ?”

Ah! I had it now. The fact that I understood them must have shown on my face but the gaolers, tired of beating about the bush, now grew more direct and fired off their requirements like
bullets.

“Peck.”

“Shot.”

“Brass.”

“Coin.”

Of course, it
was
a game that we were playing. An extremely old one, the oldest one in the book. I could have kicked myself for my slowness, for my failure to grasp the single rule of the
game, the single and simple rule. The rule is: you pay. Win or lose, you pay.

“Forgive me, sirs,” I said, fumbling under the cloak for my purse.

Fortunately I hadn’t spent much of the money which Jack Wilson and the rest of the Company had so generously supplied – or rather not all of it had yet been extorted from me. I drew
out a pair of half-crowns, which seemed to be the standard rate in this gaol, and solemnly presented one to the spongy-nosed gentleman sitting on a stool and the other to the lantern-jawed
gentleman leaning against the church doors. A swift glance, then the coins were palmed and disappeared.

“You have no angels about you,” said the man by the door, pointing to the region of my waist where he’d spotted my purse. He was referring to those old coins, the ones that
were often counterfeited and that Master Shakespeare was so fond of making puns about.

“No angel but only a little devil down there,” I said.

And – at long last! – this salacious answer seemed to meet requirements. Without another bawdy remark, without another word, Lantern-jaw turned the key of the door for a second time,
swung it back on its creaky hinges and then, with mock ceremony, bowed me out into the street.

I slid past him, expecting at every moment another summons, a further demand for cash. None came. I walked, slowly at first then at an increasing pace, away from the building that had once been
St Margaret’s church. Behind me I heard the door of the Counter prison thud shut.

Despite Master Topcourt’s topcoat I was soon damp from the drizzling rain which seemed to insinuate its way underneath, but I didn’t care about this. I halted, breathed deep several
times to clear my lungs of the prison air and turned my face up to the night sky. It was cloudy but I didn’t care about that either. At some point while I’d been inside, the fog which
seemed have been clinging to London for weeks – tighter than a miser to his money-bags, closer than a new bride to her groom, more desperately than a condemned man to his life (take your
pick) – had decided to let go of the city. Free! Free!

Although the outlook was very bleak – since I was, essentially, a fugitive from justice – nothing could take away from this brief sense of liberation. Yes, it was true that I had lost
everything. I could never rejoin the Chamberlain’s Company and would surely have to flee from the city and resign myself to a runaway’s life. But even the prospect of living wild and
unprovided for didn’t seem so awful at this moment. Or not so awful as a long period cooped up in the Counter . . . or the much worse prospect of dangling from the hempen rope of Tyburn tree.
Near where I stood, gulping down these heady draughts of freedom, was the Tabard Inn. I even considered having a celebratory ale to mark my release from captivity. I think that I was not entirely
in my right mind at this moment.

“Master Topcourt!”

I jumped.

“Nick!

A man’s voice.

“Master Revill!”

A woman’s voice.

From round the corner of Kent Street came two shapes. It was too dark to recognize them but I already knew who they were.