Jack Maggs (32 page)

74

CHAPTER ONE

It was a dismal January day in the year of 1818, and the yellow fog which had lain low all morning lifted a moment in the afternoon and then, as if the desolate pile of rock and stone thereby revealed was far too melancholy a sight to be endured, it descended again like a shroud around the walls of Newgate Prison.

These walls, being made from Welsh blue stone, had not been easily broken by the quarryman, and yet the fog, by virtue of its persistence, had been able slowly to penetrate the stone’s dark inhuman heart and touch the skin of a young woman prisoner who had fallen asleep with her face against her cell wall.

There were a great number of women inside Newgate that year. They had been brought from all over the British Isles: petty thieves, murderers, all manner of wickedness crammed into that grim pile on Newgate Street. Here, in a small cell on the second floor, eight women waited for the Majesty of the Law to turn its weary eye on every one of them by turn.

There was a good thick palliasse of straw in the corner of the cell. This, however, had already been claimed for the sole use of a ham-legged female servant “without situation” who was said to have robbed and murdered travellers on the Turnpike at Bayswater. The rest of the women—one of them a mother suckling a new babe—made use of what straw had spilled from the palliasse in the battle for its possession. They did not speak to each other, though when the name “Sophina Smith” was called through the spy-hole they looked at each other to see who “Sophina Smith” might be.

She who had rested her cheek against the wall now stood, revealing the bloody injury which had made her seek that cold comfort: four deep scratch marks on her face.

When the door opened she stepped out. Chains were put around her wrists and ankles and she was led off.

This Sophina Smith was a very comely young woman. She had exceptionally fair skin, and coal-black hair which hung in pretty ringlets around her face. She was tall and stood erect. Although slender, she had a most womanly figure. It was this very comeliness which had so affronted the ham-legged servant who had scratched her face.

Being brought out of the side door of the prison, the young woman blinked, then lowered her head, walked ten paces, then was admitted through a second door. Thus she passed from Internment to Judgment, for she was now inside the Old Bailey.

She was brought first into a dark and dingy room, illuminated by a single soot-stained lamp. Here, in company with other women similarly shackled, she waited for an hour. Then she was called into court to stand before the Judge.

The court had heard many charges that morning: a mother had tried to drown her babe, a woman had pushed a red-hot poker into her husband’s eye, but the charge against this prisoner brought a new gravity to the room.

Sophina Smith, it was now said, had used hammer and chisel to break into a house in Frith Street, Soho, the property of Gilbert Gunn, a solicitor, and therein she had stolen silver plate valued at one hundred and fifty pounds.

It was a figure high enough to have her hanged three times over.

“So,” said the Judge, “what plead you to this charge?” He was a benign-looking man in spite of his lambskin, and although his mouth turned down at the edges, an honest citizen might easily imagine him as an umpire at a county cricket match, holding the bowler’s jersey draped around his shoulders. When his question went unanswered, he bore it with good grace, repeating himself in a tone that made the recording clerk smile slightly.

Yet the young woman could not be teased into speech. She stared up at the high, panelled bench, her pretty face contorted by a rather mulish scowl.

The Judge inquired about her injury. She turned her head abruptly so it was hidden from him.

After one or two more questions, the Judge finally lost patience. He slapped his hand loudly down upon the Bench. The prisoner flinched.

Everyone who sat in the court could see her fright. Now, finally, her eyes were bright with tears. She addressed the Judge in a whisper.

“Again. I cannot hear you.”

The young woman spoke in a louder voice. She said that there could be no value in her testimony because she was a thief.

“Do you mean that you are a thief by nature or a thief as evidenced by these charges? If you are a thief by nature, that is not the concern of this court today. But if you are guilty of these charges then you must plead ‘guilty.’ If not, you must plead ‘not guilty.’ How do you plead?”

There were forty or fifty people in that court and every one of them understood that this comely young woman might be hanged for this offence. Thus her continued silence had a great effect on all of them; none more than upon a certain young man who had witnessed the proceedings with impatience from the very start. He was a tall youth, dressed in a “flash” style, with a green kerchief around his neck and a bright red waistcoat covering his chest. This wardrobe, in accompaniment with his rather bellicose expression, might cause one to suppose that he had been up to no good, and had profited from his wrong-doing. His hair was cut short and he was closely shaven, and there was nothing therefore to mask his raw emotion, to distract one from the restless anger of his eyes. Yet had his head been covered by a leather hood, he would have given himself away, for he continually twisted in his seat, leaning forward and then back, and when the young woman finally whispered that she was guilty, he leaped up to his feet and cried out that she was innocent.

Immediately the constabulary were after him, trampling over a little boy in their attempts to reach the heckler. He was big-boned, but he was nimble, and he leaped onto the bench behind. With one boot on the back of the bench and another between a parson’s legs, he called to the Judge that it was he, Jack Maggs, who had done the crime.

By this time he was surrounded, and he stepped down to the floor, still very hot and passionate, trembling like a horse.

“Bring that ruffian to the Bench,” said the Judge. Three constables, all of them shorter than their prisoner, brought the young man to stand before the Judge, who immediately declared him in contempt of court, and thereupon, without recourse to any other authority, began the young man’s interrogation himself.

“Do you know this woman?” asked the Judge, and although the young man did not answer, the answer was obvious to all: he was hissing at the young woman and she was shaking her head back at him.

“She is my brother’s wife.”

“Ah,” said the Judge, “you can speak. The malady does not run in the family?”

“Yes, I can speak,” said the young man. “And I was also in that house in Soho and I can tell Your Honour that this young woman did not do nothing. It was her husband, Tom England, who broke the lock.”

“And you, I suppose, are an innocent by-stander?”

“How can I be? It was I who packed the silver.”

“Very well,” said the Judge. “Then I will swear you as a witness.”

At this, the woman in the dock began to rock back and forth. There issued from her a high and desolate keening that continued even as she was taken from her place and sat in the front row with a policeman each side of her. Then the young man, still trembling but straight-backed, did formally reveal his name and place of lodging, swearing upon the Bible that he would tell the truth. Then he grasped the top rail of the dock and looked down at the court. He looked pale, stunned by what he had done; his belligerence had faded.

“You entered these premises in Frith Street, Mr Maggs?”

“I did.”

“You saw the silver taken from the chest?”

“I did.”

“Who took that silver?”

“I did.”

“Did anyone assist you?”

“Only so far as the door was broken. This was done, as I said, by Tom England, a carpenter of Pottery Lane in Notting Hill.”

The clerk stood to whisper in the Judge’s ear.

“Please explain to the court,” said the Judge, very irritably, “why someone would break a door down and then call the police himself.”

“Damn him,” cried the witness, although whom he meant to damn was not made clear.

“Silence!” roared the Judge.

“Tom’s interest is elsewhere.”

“I fail to understand you. Who is Tom? How does this answer the question I have just asked you?”

“Tom England. His eye is taken.”

“Jack Maggs, you will make yourself clear to the court.”

“He has another Jill who takes his fancy.”

“He has another woman, you mean?”

“He is tired of Sophina. He wishes to be quit of her, but she cannot afford to leave him and so he bent the twig.”

“Bent the twig?”

“Set the trap, Your Honour. He put her in the house, then called the police, Sir. He wants her off his hands.”

“Then you went ahead and stole the silver anyway.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do you know you can be hanged, Jack Maggs?”

“I do not care.”

“You do not care?”

“It is over in a minute.”

“You have sworn on the Bible, Jack Maggs. Do you not care what might happen to you when you stand before your God? Eternity is not over in a minute.”

The young man seemed as hard as the streets he lived by, but not so hard that this did not give him pause. “Sir, I swear by God, I’m telling the truth.”

“Do you imagine,” said the Judge, “this court is like some street fair that you can work your wickedness and profligacy upon? Do you imagine you can shout and lie before me and line your own pockets when it is obvious to anyone who hears your testimony that you and this young woman were partners in crime on that day? You, Sophina Smith, were unlucky enough to be caught. You, Sir, were impudent enough to imagine you could alter the course of justice. You shall be taken from this place henceforth and charged with the crimes of perjury and burglary.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Then you have confessed before these witnesses that you stole silver from Mr Gunn of Frith Street. But that will be dealt with at another time. Now,” he said, “the prisoner will stand.”

And then, on that foggy Wednesday afternoon whilst children played with hoops, and their nursery maids flirted with soldiers in St James’s Park, the young woman named Sophina Smith was sentenced to death by hanging and he who had tried to save her wept openly in the dock.

75

JACK MAGGS SAT ON THE mid-thwart of the lock-keeper’s punt with the note book on his lap, and from his bent bulk there now emerged a very peculiar series of sounds such as you might have imagined to be made by an injured animal: a hedgehog or a mole.

Jack Maggs was weeping. He bent his body into a hard, tight ball. He grasped his stomach and rocked to and fro. Then came the sound of a squeaky wheel, very close by. The convict stopped weeping immediately. He sat bolt upright, staring with his red eyes into the wet mist. The shadows of some elms were visible, nothing else. Chains clinked together. Jack Maggs reached for the dagger in his boot. He withdrew it with his right hand, while his high hawk’s nose followed the progress of the ghostly vehicle.

The cart (if that is what it was) passed by slowly, but even when it could be heard no more, Maggs showed no intention of sheathing his weapon. Rather he turned its cruel hooked tip toward the author of the note book.

Tobias Oates continued to sleep with his forehead resting on his knees. Jack Maggs waved the knife across him. Then he paused, placing the weapon between his teeth, and kneeled upon the thwart. Without troubling to remove his great-coat, he lowered himself into the Severn.

The river at this point was some three feet deep, and it was therefore a simple enough matter to spin the punt around so that the sleeping author was presented to him back first. Maggs took the dagger in his right hand and he placed his left arm tight around the other’s chest.

“You are a thief,” said he quietly. “A damned little thief.”

Tobias Oates woke up, struggling and splashing his heels amongst the bilge-water, but when he felt the blade up against his throat, he stopped. He lay as still as a fox caught in a snare, his speckled eyes staring straight ahead.

“Don’t kill me, Jack.”

“Shut your hole.”

“You’re cutting me!”

Maggs’s coat floated out around him, like the skirt of some great antipodean squid. “You’ll know when I’m bloody well cutting you.” He turned the boat in the water so the frightened passenger was facing him.

“Why should I not kill you now?”

Tobias Oates glanced quickly towards the bank. If he’d had thoughts of running, he abandoned them for now. He remained huddled up on the aft-thwart, waiting for what would happen next.

“You stole my Sophina, you bastard.”

Tobias felt in his jacket, but his note book was gone. “No, no. She cannot be stolen . . .”

“It were a very low scheming thieving thing you did, Toby.”

“You read my note book, Jack? You read my chapter, is that it?”

“Oh, you wrote a chapter did you? With my name in it?”

“It is a memorial I am making. Your Sophina will live for ever.”

“Don’t say her name.”

“I write that name, Jack, like a stone mason makes the name upon a headstone, so her memory may live for ever. In all the Empire, Jack, you could not have employed a better carver.”

Jack Maggs did not answer, but some lessening of agitation on his part encouraged the writer to continue. “Your painful life . . .”

“You are planning to kill me, I know that. Is that what you mean by painful? To burn me alive?”

“Not you, Jack, a character who bears your name. I will change the name sooner or later.”

“You are just a character to me too, Toby.”

“Very funny, Jack.”

“Funny? I have no reason not to kill you also, Toby.”

“Except that I am flesh and blood.”

“Did you ever see a man lashed, Toby? Did you ever see the parts of his back splashed across the soldier’s uniform?”

“You would not be wise to kill me, Jack. Not now.”

“But I am not a wise man, Toby. I am a vermin who made ten thousand pounds from mucky clay. I have a grand house in Sydney town. There is a street named for me, or was when I sailed. I keep a coach, and two footmen. I am Mr Jack Maggs Esquire, and I left all that so I might end up here today. You have cheated me, Toby, as bad as I was ever cheated.”

And here he began, very slowly, to turn the boat around, with the intention, it seemed, of bringing the young man’s neck once more within his reach. Tobias waited, staring all the while into Jack Maggs’s unstable eyes.

“Spare me,” he cried at last.

“Why would I spare you?” asked the other.

“Forgive me, Jack, but I know where your son is. I knew when I left London.”

There was a long silence. Then Maggs spoke. “Oh, you are a very brave little chap, Toby.”

“I am a wretched creature, Jack.”

“Why in God’s name did you bring me here?”

“The money.”

“Are you not a clever man? Is not that the dart with you? Did it not enter that big brain box of yours that I would have paid you twice the price for you to take me to my son in London? Where is he?”

“I will arrange to take you to him.”

“He has been in London all this while?”

“It does seem so, yes. I had a communication from your fellow footman. He has been so tormented by this secret, he knew not what to do.”

“Why tormented? Why did he not tell me?”

“It was on the eve of our departure. It was only because of my desperation I hid it from you.”

“What in God’s name do you have to be desperate of? What would make you act so cruel as this?”

“I told you of my situation.”

“Your wife’s sister? Are you serious? Here you are writing the story of the death of Maggs, and you do not know how to take care of her condition? Take me to my boy, and I will give the pills to you.”

“And my fifty pounds.”

“To hell with your fifty pounds. I will give you what you need, which is more than you deserve. We’ll stop off and get the medicine on our way into London. But let me tell you, if you do not find my boy, that is the end of you. Can you make a bargain like that? You are wagering me your very life.”

“I can.”

“Very well. Hand me your note book.”

“You have it, I believe.”

“It is on the thwart, beside you.”

Toby picked up the book.

“Give it to me.”

It was given.

“I forbid you now to write Sophina’s name, now or ever. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have your magnets with you?”

“No.”

“You will not use your magnets. You will not write my name in your book. You will not write the Phantom’s name.”

“Yes.”

Jack then hurled the book high out above the Severn. As it flew up into the mist, its pages opened like a pair of wings. At this moment a horn was blown very loud and there was a great thundering of hooves and wheels.

Tobias looked towards Jack Maggs, his face white with fright. “Coach,” said Maggs.

“Coach?”

“Stay!”

But Tobias had already jumped. He plunged down to his waist in water. Then, before Maggs had even let go of the punt, he was scrambling helter-skelter up onto the bank towards the road, wet sand clinging to his trouser legs.