The Convicts (6 page)

A man came barging through the crowd, shouting, “Move aside!” and, “Let me through!” He came with such importance that he might have been next in line to the King. “Clear a path. Pm from the parish!” he proclaimed.

He was a small but powerful figure, a bundle of muscles and sinew. He wore the long coat of a parish constable, hacked off at sleeves and tail, so that he looked both ragged and official. He pinned me on the ground. I sprawled at the feet of the gentleman, who held his little dog bundled in his arms now, the two of them quivering. Both were yapping wildly, but the gent was the louder of the two. “Thank God you came,” said he. “A moment later and he would have bashed my brains in.”

In a trice the constable had my hands behind my back and a rope around my wrists. Then he hauled me up and took me away, tugging with his rope as he pushed me ahead, so that I stumbled like a half-wit. The gentleman followed several paces behind, asking nervously, “Have you got a grip on him now?”

We went straight to a magistrate's court. Even then, in the dead of night, the old beak was up and about. Wrapped in a cloak of near-black wool, he sat with three old ladies and a thin man, in chairs drawn close to the tortoise stove. A little clerk with a runny nose was busy with scuttle and shovel, feeding the groaning stove lumps of coal.

They all looked up as the constable propelled me into the room. “Close the door!” they shouted together.

The thin man had his back toward me. He shifted in his chair, his arms and legs writhing like four long snakes. At his feet was a briefcase; he must have been a lawyer. “Oh, it's a boy,” he said.

“A thief,” said the constable. “He was accostin’ this nib-some gent.” He tipped his head toward the quivering gentleman, who had taken a post in the corner, holding his quivering dog.

The magistrate heaved himself from his chair. With a mighty sigh he climbed to his bench, sat again, sighed again, and said, “Bring him forward.”

With a twist on the rope, the constable hauled me to the bench. Above me, the magistrate peered down through little spectacles. He set them straight on his nose. “You've been here before,” he said.

“No, sir,” I told him.

“No?” He turned to his clerk. “Have we not seen this urchin before?”

The clerk sniffed and wiped his nose. “Many times, m'lud.”

“Indeed.” The magistrate opened a ledger. He took a quill from its ink pot and scratched on the pages. “Boy, why did you accost this gentleman?”

“I didn't, sirf I said. “I was only asking him for help.”

“Good Lord!” cried the gentleman, from the back. “He was asking with a cudgel.”

Round the stove, the women cackled. The thin whip of a lawyer rubbed his long fingers together.

“Wfeit did he steal from you, sir?” asked the magistrate.

“Nothing, exactly,” answered the gent.

“Well, vaguely, then,” said the magistrate, annoyed. “Did he take
anything?
Did he strike you?”

“No, your worship.”

The gentleman suddenly sounded miserable. But my spirits began to rise. I believed in the law and its truths, and saw that I would soon be free. The magistrate frowned. He closed the ledger and returned his quill to the pot All my troubles would have ended there and then if one of the old women hadn't leapt to her feet, shouting holy murder.

“Look at ‘im!” she cried. “By cracky, look at ‘im, will you.” Her arm came up; a bony finger pointed at my feet. “Those boots. Those is
Arnold's
boots!”

I looked stupidly at my feet, at the blind man's boots. I didn't see right away what it meant that I wore them.

“Yes, they's Arnold's.” White-haired and wrinkled, she was like a witch. Her voice seemed to set the lamplights flickering. “Ask ‘im this, your lordship. Ask the boy ‘ow ‘e come by the boots of a murdered man.”

The magistrate, the clerk, the lawyer, and the ladies all fixed me with the darkest looks. The ledger was opened again, the quill taken from the pot. “Where did you get those boots?” asked the magistrate.

“I was given them, sir,” I said.

“He's lying!” shouted the woman.

“I'm
not”
I snapped back. “A boy gave them to me. I know where they came from, sir. I know they belonged to a blind man, but /didn't kill him.
He
tried to kill me, and that's the truth. He nearly drowned me in the mud, and it was only my shoelaces that saved me. I spent my shoelace money on a Chelsea bun, and…”

I knew I made no sense. I could see it in the astonishment on the magistrate's face. Before he could speak I started again, blundering ahead.

“Please, sir, you have to believe me,” I told him. “It was another boy who was here before. The one you know, that's a different boy. He looked like me—he looked
exactly
like me, sir—but now he's dead, and people think I am him. The boys, the Daikey, they all think I'm him. That's why I've got the blind man's boots, sir, because Penny thinks I'm the Smasher. So that's why I went up to this gentleman, sir; to ask him to save me. I'm a schoolboy, sir; I've done nothing wrong. You
do
believe me, don't you, sir?”

I said all this in the most heartfelt way. There seemed no reason why the magistrate shouldn't believe me, and I was greatly pleased to see him smile.

“What a remarkable story,” said he. “Clerk, have we ever heard a betterone than this?”

“Never, m'lud,” said the clerk with a sniff.

The magistrate picked up his quill. The feather tipped and wriggled in his hand. “The prisoner will stand trial for murder,” he said.

“Oh, murder. Thank you, your lordship,” said the constable. I imagined he would earn a little more for bringing in a murderer than for a mere thief. He bobbed his head, then wrenched me away.

I called out to the lawyer as the rope pulled me backward “Help me. Please,” I said, stumbling toward the door. “I can pay you for it, sir. I've got a fortune, sir. I'm rich.”

He stared after me, Ms hands on the buckles of his briefcase. Then I passed the gentleman with the little black dog, and he put his head forward arid spat on my face.

That was nearly the end for me. With my hands bound, I couldn't reach up and wipe away the spittle. I felt it dribble down my cheek, and I very nearly cried.

I was driven to prison in a two-wheeled cart, with a guard who kept plucking lice from his hair, crunching each creature between his teeth. It wasn't that, nor the spittle, nor my own misery that made me ill. It was the violent rocking of the vehicle as it bore me through the darkened streets. I had never had a stomach for motion. At the age of six I had fallen from a slow-turning carousel, and a doctor had told my mother, “The boy has an imbalance in his ears.”

I thought it was a blessing when we finally stopped, until I saw the walls of Newgate Prison like a dismal fortress in the night.

More than once I had passed there with my father, and always with a shudder at the horrors that lay hidden behind those walls. I had heard the shrieks, the cries, the groans, and had always hurried along. But now the walls seemed twice as sheer and twice as high. I saw the iron door of crossed bars, and it looked as though it could open only once for me—to let me in, but never to let me out.

The gatekeeper shuffled out from his place with a lamp in his hand. “Ow, it's you again,” he said. “Welcome ‘ome, young master.”

His keys jangled as he turned the locks and drew the bolts. The door creaked. “In you go, my lad,” he said.

I passed between walls that were four feet thick. My name was entered into the prison book, a second door was opened, and a warder led me into the depths of Newgate. It rang with the clank of iron and the shrieks of the insane. But it was even worse in daylight, when the putrid fog oozed through windows and air shafts. In the exercise yard the convicts trudged round and round. A man walked the long treadmill, his back bent as he stumbled forever uphill.

In a ward full of boys I sat in a corner. They spent hours arranged in a circle, picking each other's pockets, applauding the quickest hands. None would talk to me, which suited me fine, yet they never stopped talking
about
me. “That's the Smasher,” said one.

“He went mad,” said another.

“He died,” said a fourth. “Them sisters tried to save him “

It was my diamond that saved
me.
It busied my mind with fancies of riches, with the mystery of how it had found its way to the river. Had a smuggler dropped it on a dark night? Had a long-ago king, or a pirate, let it fall from a chest full of jewels? Or had it lain there since the beginnings of time? Where there was one, perhaps there were others, and I dreamed myself back there, searching through the mud.

Toward the end of my third day, a turnkey arrived at the ward and called my name. “You have a visitor,” he said.

He took me to a vast chamber, as quiet as a crypt, where enormous arches soared to the ceiling. In a little room at the center of it all, a man sat behind walls of glass. His back was toward me, but I saw right away who it was. The thin head, the thinner neck, belonged to the lawyer from the magistrate's court.

His briefcase lay open on a polished table. He stood up as I entered, then waved me into a chair—grandly—as though the room were his private office. “Do you remember me?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“My name is Meel. Mr. Meel,” He sat again, bending into the chair like a folding ruler. “I have taken an interest in you, Tom, and Pd like to help.” He crossed his legs. “Will you tell me about yourself ?”

“Where should I begin?” I asked.

“Tell me who you are. Tell me where you live.”

He seemed surprised when I told him I was from Cam-den Town. But he was clearly shocked to learn how my father had been taken to debtor's prison.

“How can that be?” he said. “You told me that you owned a fortune”

“I do, sir,” I said. “I was getting to that.” - “Then hurry, my boy,” said Mr. Meel.

Off I went again, reliving the days in my mind. I walked through the fog toward London, down to the river where the blind man was. I saw the diamond in the mud, stooped, and picked it up again.

“Surely not as big as that,” said Mr. Meel, staring at my fingers as they curved around the imagined stone.

“Oh, yes, sir,” I said. “It was enormous.”

So were his eyes just then. “And the color? What color was it, Tom?”

“Mostly gold,” I said. “It was red and yellow, but…”

“Like a fire burning in your hand?”

“Yes, sir.” I said.

He swallowed. His fingers touched the bulge in his throat. “Where is it, Tom?” he asked.

“That's part of my story,” I said. “You see, I was—”

“Weil, go on,” he said, “I'm a busy man. You picked up the diamond, and… and then what, Tom?”

Was I right to think that Mr. Meel cared more about the diamond than he did about me? Or had the wealth of my great jewel, and the greed it had brought, only made me too suspicious of everyone? I went more carefully after that. I told how I had wrestled with the blind man, how I hadn't meant to kill him. “He was still alive when I ran away,” I said. “I swear he was still alive. They can't hang me for that, can they, Mr. Meel?”

He shook his head quickiy. “No, no. Of course not, Tom. So you hid the diamond, did you?”

We were back to that jewel.

Again and again I went doggedly on with my story. I talked about Worms and his three-legged horse, about the open grave and my dead double inside it. “This is his coat,” I said, plucking at the sleeve. “Now everyone thinks I'm him. But I'm not, Mr. Meel. I'm not a thief, and I'm not a killer.”

“And you're not making sense,” he said impatiently. “What happened to the diamond?”

“Why do you care so much about that?” It was hard for me, a boy, to speak so boldly to a lawyer. I felt myself blush as I told him, “I think you're only after my diamond.”

He drew a breath, then laughed. “Well, you don't know the first thing about law. If I'm to help you, I must see the diamond.”

“Why?” I asked.

“How to put it simply? In terms you'll understand …” He tapped his index finger on his long nose. “Look, Tom.
If
you found a diamond, and
if
the blind man tried to take it from you, and
if you
killed the poor wretch, then no one can call it murder.” He blinked. “But you'll have to produce the diamond. It's what we call evidence.”

Mr. Meel stared at me for a moment. “Can't you see that, Tom? Your diamond is the key.”

“Then I'm lost,” I said. “I know where it is, and how to get it. But how am I to do that in prison?”

“By telling me,” said Mr. Meel. “I will fetch the diamond for you/’

I didn't know what to do. Trying to give him the proper directions would be hard enough, but trying to guess if I
should
was impossible.

“Do you think I'll run off with it?” Again he laughed. “Is that what you think?”

I was embarrassed that he'd seen right through me. I shook my head, but not convincingly.

“You foolish, foolish boy,” he said. “I'll tell you something, Tom Tin; I don't believe your diamond even exists.”

“Do you say that I'm lying?” I asked.