just enough to change my view, but still no sign. A strange sort of panic washed over me, as though I had lost a small child with whose care I had been charged. “Yate!” I called out, over the noise of grunting and cheering and the slap of fist on flesh. I received no answer to my calls.
And then it stopped. One moment I was fighting, shouting for Yate, and the next instant all had gone quiet, and I found myself swinging at air, spinning madly in search of the next anonymous opponent. A crowd formed around me with a good five feet of distance. I felt like a trapped animal, a thing dangerous and alien. I stood there breathing hard, half doubled over, waiting for the strength to inquire why I had become the subject of such scrutiny.
Then two constables stepped forward and took my arms.
I let them. I did not resist. I leaned forward to rest while they held me up, and in my exhaustion I heard a voice I did not recognize say, “That’s him. That’s the one. He’s the dirty Gypsy what killed Walter Yate.”
And with that I was taken to the magistrate’s office.
CHAPTER 5
L ONDON AFTER DARK is no place for the vulnerable, let alone the naked, but I had freed myself from the most dreaded prison in the kingdom, and I could rejoice that I still had shoes upon my feet. My state would otherwise be as unwholesome as it was humiliating, for in my journey I moved south and, consequently, near to the Fleet Ditch. On these streets a perambulator is likely to step in turds or bits of rotting dog or the discarded tumor of some surgeon’s labors. A man who had just escaped prison and near death in a narrow tomb, however, had no business feeling squeamish about a bit of kennel or amputated flesh on his bare legs, particularly when there was an icy rain to wash him clean. As to the problem of my nakedness, it was, though cold and wet, also dark outside—surely the best condition under which to undertake a prison escape—and I had little doubt that, in this city I knew so well, I should be able to remain hidden in shadows.
But not forever. I would need clothing, and quickly too, for though the joy of having won my freedom coursed through my veins, making me feel as alert as though I’d had a dozen dishes of coffee, I felt dangerously cold, and my hands began to grow numb. My teeth chattered, and I shivered so hard I feared I should lose my balance and fall upon the ground. I was not happy with the prospect of taking from another what I so desired myself, but necessity outweighed whatever peccadilloes of morality troubled my thoughts. Besides, I had no intention of taking any man’s clothes entire and leaving him in my own current state of nature. I merely wished to find someone who could be persuaded, one way or another, to share some small portion of his bounty.
There is something about having been in prison, and perhaps more so in having escaped from prison, that makes a man see the familiar as new. As I made my way to the west and south, I smelled the stench of the Fleet like some bumptious arrival from the country. I heard the strangeness of the cries of the pie sellers and the chicken men and the shrimp girls, “Shrimp shrimp shrimp shrimpers!” called out again and again like a bird of the tropics. The sloppy words scrawled on the walls that I would never before have noticed—
Walpole go ye to the devil
and
Jenny King is a hore and slut
and
Com and see Misus Rose at the sine of the Too Biships for sheepskins
—now seemed to me the outlandish scrawl of a mysterious alphabet. But the renewed strangeness of the city took little of my attention from the discomfort of being cold and wet and hungry—hungry to dizziness—and the cries of pies and pickled fish and roast turnips distracted me something immense.
My ramble through this unsavory part of town took on the grim, disjointed tone of a nightmare. Once or twice a linkboy or mendicant spotted me and hooted, but, for good or ill, in a metropolis such as this one, where
And then it stopped. One moment I was fighting, shouting for Yate, and the next instant all had gone quiet, and I found myself swinging at air, spinning madly in search of the next anonymous opponent. A crowd formed around me with a good five feet of distance. I felt like a trapped animal, a thing dangerous and alien. I stood there breathing hard, half doubled over, waiting for the strength to inquire why I had become the subject of such scrutiny.
Then two constables stepped forward and took my arms.
I let them. I did not resist. I leaned forward to rest while they held me up, and in my exhaustion I heard a voice I did not recognize say, “That’s him. That’s the one. He’s the dirty Gypsy what killed Walter Yate.”
And with that I was taken to the magistrate’s office.
CHAPTER 5
L ONDON AFTER DARK is no place for the vulnerable, let alone the naked, but I had freed myself from the most dreaded prison in the kingdom, and I could rejoice that I still had shoes upon my feet. My state would otherwise be as unwholesome as it was humiliating, for in my journey I moved south and, consequently, near to the Fleet Ditch. On these streets a perambulator is likely to step in turds or bits of rotting dog or the discarded tumor of some surgeon’s labors. A man who had just escaped prison and near death in a narrow tomb, however, had no business feeling squeamish about a bit of kennel or amputated flesh on his bare legs, particularly when there was an icy rain to wash him clean. As to the problem of my nakedness, it was, though cold and wet, also dark outside—surely the best condition under which to undertake a prison escape—and I had little doubt that, in this city I knew so well, I should be able to remain hidden in shadows.
But not forever. I would need clothing, and quickly too, for though the joy of having won my freedom coursed through my veins, making me feel as alert as though I’d had a dozen dishes of coffee, I felt dangerously cold, and my hands began to grow numb. My teeth chattered, and I shivered so hard I feared I should lose my balance and fall upon the ground. I was not happy with the prospect of taking from another what I so desired myself, but necessity outweighed whatever peccadilloes of morality troubled my thoughts. Besides, I had no intention of taking any man’s clothes entire and leaving him in my own current state of nature. I merely wished to find someone who could be persuaded, one way or another, to share some small portion of his bounty.
There is something about having been in prison, and perhaps more so in having escaped from prison, that makes a man see the familiar as new. As I made my way to the west and south, I smelled the stench of the Fleet like some bumptious arrival from the country. I heard the strangeness of the cries of the pie sellers and the chicken men and the shrimp girls, “Shrimp shrimp shrimp shrimpers!” called out again and again like a bird of the tropics. The sloppy words scrawled on the walls that I would never before have noticed—
Walpole go ye to the devil
and
Jenny King is a hore and slut
and
Com and see Misus Rose at the sine of the Too Biships for sheepskins
—now seemed to me the outlandish scrawl of a mysterious alphabet. But the renewed strangeness of the city took little of my attention from the discomfort of being cold and wet and hungry—hungry to dizziness—and the cries of pies and pickled fish and roast turnips distracted me something immense.
My ramble through this unsavory part of town took on the grim, disjointed tone of a nightmare. Once or twice a linkboy or mendicant spotted me and hooted, but, for good or ill, in a metropolis such as this one, where
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