The System of the World (104 page)

However, haply

(2) Another strange rite was getting underway to the left side of the gate-privy axis. They had approached the Poor Side of the prison:
a couple of very large rooms at the extremity of the south wing, where prisoners who could not afford apartments slept and lived all crowded together. Against the exterior wall of one of those teeming halls was a cistern, fed by a pump. This was sunk into the earth less than a hundred feet away from Fleet Ditch itself and so Daniel had to will himself not to imagine what sort of water came out of it. A dozen or so persons were approaching it: a tight cluster of four, surrounded by a ragged entourage. They spread out around the cistern and Daniel perceived that one of them had his elbows pinioned behind his back with a shaggy hank of twine. He was uncovered, and being frogmarched by others who were every bit as down-at-heels as he was but had managed to round up artifacts recognizable as hats and wigs. Heads turned toward the oldest of these, and he went into a peroration that sounded, for all the world, like a legal judgment: certainly it went on that long, and was that hard to follow. It was as pompous as these men were shabby, but when the leprous verbiage was scraped away to expose its grammatical bones, what it said was that these fellows (except for the one who was tied up) were something called the Court of Inspectors and that he, the one who was talking, was the Steward thereof, and that in some proceeding just concluded they had found the bare-headed one guilty of having entered so-and-so’s apartment yesterday and stealing a clay bottle containing gin from out of a hole in the wall where its rightful owner was generally known to park it, when not pressing it against his lips; and that the sentence for said crime was to be carried out forthwith. Whereupon the gin-nicker was spun around so that his back was to the cistern, and its rim behind his knees, and then shoved back so that his feet went out and up, and his head pierced the glaze of scum that covered the reservoir, and went under. Maintaining a fierce grip on the man’s shoulders, his captors maneuvered him so that his face was directly beneath the spout of the pump, and a third officer of the “Court of Inspectors” set to work jacking the pump-handle as vigorously as he could. It was difficult to monitor the results because a crowd of prisoners had gathered round to be edified by it. Daniel glimpsed the prisoner’s feet dancing an air tarantella. Debtors had gathered in all of the Prison’s windows to learn from the booze-hound’s errors. Saturn had a fair view, being tall. Daniel sidled around behind him and stood with his back pressed against Saturn’s and looked the other way, at what he took to be the strong-rooms.

These certainly looked the part, having heavy doors with redundant bars and locks, and little to nothing in the way of windows. He’d heard that some of the strong-rooms were near the Ditch, the Privies, and the prison’s dung-midden, and that was true of these, though
the stench was not so bad as all this implied because it was a crisp day. But Daniel did not see any of the precautions he’d have expected if members of the Shaftoe gang had been locked up here. Moreover, at their other side, these rooms faced the Ditch-brink, and might have windows or grates communicating with the outside, which made them a less fitting place for locking up really infamous criminals.

The gin-thief having been fully reformed, the pumping ended, and its beneficiary was dragged out half-dead and left on the ground next to the cistern. The crowd dispersed. Some of them went south round the nearer end of the great building, squeezing through a narrow and loathsome pass between it and the privies and the midden; here the surrounding wall was forty feet high, because it came so close to the upper-storey windows of the building that it put anyone who looked at it in mind of rope-based strategies. But once Daniel and Saturn had rounded the corner and turned north again, now on the east side of the building, the space between it and the wall broadened decisively into a close a hundred feet or more across, which Daniel identified from his preliminary readings as the Racket Ground. This adjoined the north or Master’s Side of the prison, where more affluent debtors dwelled in apartments that were more or less crowded depending on how much money they had—this being one of the Warden’s primary Engines of Revenue. Despite the chill in the air there were too many games of rackets, bowls, skittles, &c. underway here for Daniel to sort out. Around the edges were a few scabrous tables where it looked like card-games might be prosecuted during summer. Daniel took a seat at one of these to rest his legs. His back was to the prison wall and he could survey the entire Racket Ground and the Master’s Side opposite. Some distance off to his right, the prison’s northeastern lobe was described by the curve of the wall. Nestled in its lee were a few separate buildings: a kitchen, which had its own pump and cistern. To one side of it, another midden, threatening to engulf another privy—all of this disconcertingly close to the prison chapel. To the other side, a building in the crook of the wall that Daniel would have been hard pressed to identify—that is, if not for the fact that two armed soldiers were standing in front of it. Two tents, standard military issue, and a cook-fire encroached on the Racket Ground nearby.

Daniel had been carrying a map-case slung over one shoulder. He unlimbered it now and unbuckled its lid. When he overturned it, the first thing that emerged was a wee avalanche of dust and of plaster-crumbs still bound together in clusters by horse-hair. But with a bit of shaking he was able to produce a roll of documents.

Saturn had last seen these when he’d rooted them out of a shattered
wall in the cupola of Bedlam. “When you were abusing the pavement with your stick, some of the prisoners espied you, and speculated you were mad,” he said. “Now I do begin to wonder—”

“It suits me very well for them to suppose I am mad!” Daniel exclaimed, pleased to hear about it. “You may explain to them that I am not only daft but senile, and convinced that treasure was buried here long ago by a counterfeiter—”

“Counterfeiter! Here?”

“Yes, from time to time coiners and smugglers have been committed to this place by the Court of Exchequer or Curia Regis. So the story makes sense to that point, as all madman-stories must, in their beginnings. I’ve got it into my head that I can find this treasure. You are a manservant, charged, by my exasperated family, with following me around, keeping me out of trouble, and tending to my needs.”

“In that capacity,” said Peter Hoxton, “I’ll just nip down to the Tap-Room, if it’s all the same to you, and get chocolate for myself and—?”

“Coffee for me, thank you,” said Daniel, and began to wrestle the drawings out on the pitted tabletop, weighing them down at the edges with shattered bowling-pins. Saturn ambled across the Racket Ground, dodging airborne or rolling balls as need be, and giving the cold shoulder to an acquaintance who’d recognized him. He worked his way north round the aperture between kitchen and chapel so that he could go in at the northern extremity of the building—the Tap-Room and coffeehouse were there, hard by the chapel.

As he had been doing on and off for fifty years, Daniel communed with the mind of Robert Hooke through Hooke’s curious notes and jottings, and his exquisite pictures.

Anno Domini 1335 ye Warden of ye Fleet hired laborers to dig a Moat around ye Prop’ty (ye Court & ye Building withal). Width of ye Excav’n was 10 Feet. Of Necessity (or else how could it have been Filled with Water) we say that this communicated with ye Fleet at two places, forming an ox-bow lying to ye East side of that River, & that its Pos’n agrees approx. with ye present Wall…a later Record complains that Sewers & Tannery-drains & as many as 1 doz. Latrines have been made to discharge into said Moat from adjoining Prop’ties, making of it an open Sewer that must needs have been no less Offensive then, than is the Fleet Ditch to-day…ye Moat no longer exists, & yet ye Rec’ds want any sugg’n of its having been Filled. Whence I venture to Conclude, ’twas never Filled, but rather Roofed, to shield ye Environs from its noisome damps, & yet discharges into ye Fleet, most probably at A and B, & doth account for much of what is loathsome about that Ditch…
and here Hooke went on to develop his argument that the same treatment ought to be given to the Ditch itself.

A and B referred to two locations on the east bank of Fleet Ditch, near the prison’s northwest and southwest corners. These were marked on a survey plat, done by Hooke after the Fire. Comparing this against what he could see from his present vantage point, Daniel had now the satisfying experience of its all coming together coherently in his mind. Few human monuments were as permanent, as un-moveable, as a stone shithouse—especially one that by long-standing tradition was used by everyone in a crowded neighborhood. If Fleet Lane butcher’s boys were taking a shite at the southern end of the place in 1714, it probably meant they’d been doing so in 1614, 1514, 1414, &c. That row of privies must be among the dozen or so that had been erected over the moat. And the privy that Daniel was now looking at, next to the kitchen, must be over the moat, too—but on the opposite prong of the ox-bow. The back of that edifice was the Prison wall. Just on its other side would be a row of buildings that fronted on Fleet Lane. Some of these were slaughterhouses that, long ago, must have gathered along the north brink of that moat like flies, and employed it to carry away their offal. Likewise the prison kitchen, just there next to that privy.

And the next building along was the one that was being guarded by the soldiers.

Daniel had read legal filings made by prisoners who had been incarcerated in a certain strong-room on the Master’s Side of the Fleet, and who had hired lawyers to get them out of it at all costs. For such prisoners tended not to be debtors. They had been put there by Curia Regis or Star Chamber, and were dangerous and wealthy. The place was described, in these documents, as being situated on the south side of a ditch, which made no sense unless it was taken as a reference to the vanished moat. The dungeon was described as “infested with toads and vermin” and “surcharged with loathsome vapors” and “impervious to the least ray of light.” Prisoners there were chained to floor-staples and condemned to lie in sewage—their own (for there was not even a bucket) as well as what seeped in through the walls.

These happy ruminations were interrupted by Saturn, who had come back with a serving-woman in tow. She set out the drinks. Saturn had borrowed some newspapers from the Tap-Room (which was said to be as well-stocked with current reading material as any Clubb in the metropolis) and sat down to peruse these over his chocolate.

Daniel scrutinized the woman—though perhaps not as rudely as a turnkey—and guessed she was no whore, but perhaps the wife of a debtor, obliged to live here for a long time (perhaps forever) and trying to make some pin-money by helping out in the Tap-Room (another Engine of Revenue for the Warden). She gave as good as she
got in the way of scrutiny, from which Daniel knew that Saturn had already told her the daft treasure-hunter story.

“My good woman,” Daniel said, rooting his coin-purse from his pocket so that she would not wander off, “are you connected with the Management?”

“Y’mean, the Court of Inspectors, like?”

Daniel smiled. “I had in mind the Warden—”

The woman was taken aback that the Warden should be brought into the conversation, even by a senile madman; Daniel might as well have asked her if she took tea with the Pope of Rome.

“The Court of Inspectors, then, if
they
are the responsible parties.”

“They are
responsible
for a lot of
parties,
know-
what-I-mean!” She exchanged a twinkly look with Saturn: having a bit of harmless fun baiting the gager.

“Those men with the muskets would not allow me to investigate yonder dungeon!” Daniel complained, pointing to the soldiers. “I had been led to believe that the Fleet was open to all, but—”

“You’re in luck, then,” the woman announced.

“How so, madame?”

“Well, it’s like this: if you wanted near
aught
else, it’d be a cold day in Hell ’fore the Steward would give you the least bit of satisfaction, ’less you paid him, of course. But on the matter of them soldiers, the Steward is
exercised,
he is, and been making all manner of tedious speeches at the Wine-Clubb and the Beer-Clubb, and filing briefs against the Powers that Be! Your complaints shan’t fall on deaf ears, sir, if you go to the Steward direct—’specially if you make a contribution, like, know-what-I-mean.”

During this Daniel had been extracting coins from his purse and sorting them on the tabletop, which had not gone unnoticed. He placed the tip of an index finger on one of modest value and slid it across the table so that the woman could take it—which she did. Her gaze was now rapt on Daniel’s index finger, which continued to hover above the array of coins.

“Am I correct in gathering, then, that the garrisoning of armed soldiers in the Fleet is an
unusual
procedure?”

It took her a moment to decode this. “Armed soldiers here unusual, why yes! I should say so!”

“They’ve not been here long, then?”

“Since August, I’d say. Guarding them new prisoners—or so ’tis claimed. The Steward scoffs—calls it a ruse—a press-what-do-you-call-it—”

“A precedent.”

“Yeah.”

“That must not be allowed to stand, lest the Fleet insensibly begin to lose its ancient privileges,” Daniel guessed, exchanging a look with Saturn. Which might have sounded incredibly pretentious and high-flown; but Saturn had insisted that the debtors of the Fleet spent a third of their lives sleeping, a third drinking, gambling, smoking, &c., and a third pursuing abstract legal disputes with the Warden.

“The Steward is the chief of the Court of Inspectors?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Elected, or—”

“It’s complicated, like. Most often he is the eldest debtor.”

“The senior debtors run the place through this made-up Court, then.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Course!” Then they narrowed. “But ain’t
all
Courts made-up?”