The System of the World (106 page)

This utterance had begun promisingly, but then degenerated (in the opinion of most) into a windy and recondite history-lesson, and so the applause was not as vigorous as it might have been, had he simply ordered another keg tapped. But that suited his purposes well enough. The true believers in the buried-gold story had suspected, all evening long, that some new ferment was at work in Old Partry’s mind, and they now surged toward him, waving shovels and pointed sticks. The Court of Inspectors were extremely dismayed, and of a
mind to have Daniel Pumped; but they were helpless as long as engulfed in a Mobb of visitors whose bellies were full of beer paid for by Old Partry.

“Now if you would be so accommodating as to bear me round to the Poor Side,” Daniel said, “I shall find the treasure, and we shall extract it, and divide it up! I make only one demand of you, which is that you remain well clear of the soldiers, and in no way menace or molest them. They are armed, after all; and if we are so rash as to hand them a pretext, why, they might just seize what’s rightfully ours!”

This, he thought, percolated to the edge of the crowd reasonably well. As well, it gave the Court of Inspectors an excuse to exercise their authority. He saw the Steward and three of his high council making for the dungeon straightaway, presumably to explain to the soldiers what was going on.

“To the Poor-Side Cistern!” Daniel commanded, and in a few moments was borne there, followed by a thrilled company of shovel-men. This was the place where Daniel had seen a prisoner Pumped on his first visit. He drew out a document. It was written in the Real Character: perfectly impenetrable to even the literate among the debtors, which was a good thing, since it was actually a description of a clock-work mechanism written a long time ago by Hooke. “The inscription says, proceed from here along a line parallel to the Ditch for fifty paces, until a certain Tree is reached,” he announced, and let it be known that he wished to dismount. His bearers let him down, and he backed up to the edge of the cistern, faced north, and began to pace: “One, two, three…”

By the time he had reached ten, they had begun to count along with him. Fifty found them all goose-stepping and chanting in perfect unison in the Painted Ground.

“No tree,” Daniel observed in the silence that ensued. “Of course, it was burned in the Fire. We must proceed anyway, keeping in mind that there is likely to be some error.” He scrutinized the document, turning it this way and that, until many had grown restive, and some had even begun to dig holes. “ ‘Turn to the right and go another hundred,’ it says, which foxed me for a bit,” said Daniel, gazing up at the wall of the Prison, which barred all rightward movement. “Until one considers that the prison that stood in those days was
smaller
. We must measure a distance of one hundred paces
that way
.” And he thrust his hand at the Prison.

Now, everyone in the whole party had a different notion of how this was to be achieved, and so for ten minutes the Fleet seemed to have swopped inmates with Bedlam, as all over the place people were clambering through windows, stretching bits of twine across other inmates’
cells, pacing along exterior walls, and dragging sticks through dirt. But after a while, two-thirds of them reconvened on the near edge of the Racket Ground. Smaller clusters of dissident pacers and measurers staked out more or less far-flung positions which they insisted were the correct ones.

“There is supposed to be another tree here, but it’s gone,” said Daniel. He spent a while reading, and squinting up at the dome of St. Paul’s. “Of course the turret of old St. Paul’s was in a slightly different place,” he reminded them, “but fortunately I am old enough to remember it.” He paced toward that remembered landmark all the way across the Racket Ground, parallelled by the several dissident groups, who counted his paces jealously. He stopped just short of the Prison wall, then sidestepped five paces to the left, until he was standing on the rim of a shallow stone gutter that ran for some distance along the wall’s base. He looked both ways, pretending to check for landmarks; but really he was performing reconaissance on the soldiers. All dozen of them had been rousted from their tents by their sergeant, and now stood in a picket-line across the front of the dungeon-building, facing outwards, with fixed bayonets. The sergeant stood in front of the line. In front of him were several worthies of the Court of Inspectors, who seemed to want to create a buffer between the soldiers and the shovelers. All of these had been watching Daniel alertly, as he had drawn to within half a dozen yards of the nearest soldiers. But that was as close as he came. “Here is where the instructions tell us to dig,” he announced, and stamped the ground. And then he danced out of the way, lest his foot be taken off by the blade of a shovel. He glanced up to see the soldiers looking somewhat relieved. In the dimness behind them, a large man sprinted at the privy as though his bowels were about to give way. Old Partry had been quite forgotten, and was shouldered to the edge of the crowd, and his wig knocked off (actually, he abetted this by shaking his head at the right moment). In the shadow of the Prison wall he shrugged off his cloak, and then stepped out into the clear, uncovered, and dressed in shabby attire that blended well with what most people wore around here. He walked south, all the way around the poor wing, and doubled back along the western side of the prison and walked north past the cistern and the main gate (thronged, now, with Beer-Clubbers wishing to go home, so that all three turnkeys were kept busy inspecting their faces). Up across the Painted Ground he strolled, and then around the north end of the prison building. The vandalized privy was directly ahead of him. He had made almost a complete circuit of the Fleet to reach it; but in this way he had been able to approach it without parading in front of the soldiers. He entered,
sat on the bench, took a deep breath, raised his knees, and spun around on his arse until his feet were poised above the hole. As soon as he dipped them in, strong hands grabbed his ankles and pulled down. Faster than he’d have liked, the rest of him followed. Only his head and shoulders were still showing when he was blinded by sudden lanthorn-glare. Someone was coming in the door of the privy! There was a gasp. Daniel was yanked downwards, barking his chin on the edge of the hole. A scream sounded from the world above, and a crash as the visitor dropped the lanthorn. The ragged oval of light above was snuffed out.

“Do you s’pose she got a good look at your face?” Saturn grunted in his ear. But Daniel was unable to respond. A kind of paralyzing dismay had come over him, as precursor to horror and, in all likelihood, sickness. He was finally now understanding what it really meant to be in a London sewer—and he wasn’t even really down in it yet, for Saturn was bearing him over one shoulder, sloshing down the tunnel toward a source of illumination hidden round the curve of the ox-bow.

Daniel would have fled, if not for the shameful knowledge that he’d been paying other people to do this for a week.

He suffered. Time passed. They were in a different part of the tunnel, with more light and more people. A great hole had been knocked through the wall. Men were working in a low-ceilinged vault. On its far wall was a massive door; wedges had been driven into the crack between it and its jamb, so that even if the soldiers heard something above the din of the Mobb and came down to investigate they would not be able to get it open. Three of the worst-looking wretches Daniel had ever seen were reclining on the floor, as if taking their leisure; but of course they were sick, and weak, and fettered by hundred-pound irons from Newgate. A bloke with a hammer and a punch was striking the irons off of them, one wrist or ankle at a time. By the time Daniel reached them, one was free, and sitting up to rub his wrists. “We been complainin’ for weeks they didn’t give us a latrine,” he observed, “and now we’re going to go
down
one.”

“
Up
one is more like,” said Saturn. “I hope you are in condition to climb a ladder, Danny.”

“I hope that gager slung over your shoulder is,” Danny returned.

“He has hidden reserves,” Saturn said.

“He’d better stop hiding them,” said the black man—though it was not easy to discern skin tones under these circumstances.

Moved, finally, by this and more such mockery, Daniel wriggled, and insisted that he be set upright in the tunnel. The stuff came up to his knees. He got through it by reminding himself that he would,
in some sense, survive. “If some of us are ready to go, then let us go,” he suggested.

“We’ll stay together, thank’ee kindly,” said Danny. Tomba had been struck free, but the hammer-man was only beginning to work on Jimmy. “But feel free to lead the way—supposin’ there
is
one.”

“Oh, there is,” Saturn assured him, “Only the final inch needs to be cleared.” And he hefted a thick iron bar.

T
HE FINAL INCH CONSISTED OF
planks. It was a floor built over a relatively wide shaft that led down into the sewer. It was all that separated that cloacal world from the House of Office in the back of the brothel in Bell Savage Inn.

Saturn was, in general, not one to throw his weight around, and make much of his bigness; he was a big man of the understated type. Which made it all the more impressive when he decided to make the most of his endowments. Nothing could have prepared the ladies of the establishment for the sight of him erupting from the floor of their toilet in a volcano of shards and splinters. They made no pretense of trying to puzzle it out, but only ran for the exits, abandoning customers in various states of
déshabille
and divers levels of excitement. The brothel had two bouncers: these were naturally posted at the front door, and so some minutes passed before they were made to believe that their services were needed in the House of Office. Eventually they came, swinging coshes, and found themselves outnumbered, out-muscled, and out-weaponed by seven filthy men who had, by that time, emerged from the hole inaugurated by Saturn.

“If you have come to eject us,” Daniel said to them, “you might like to know that our only desire is to leave. Pray, where is the exit?”

O
UT IN THE CLOSE
of Bell Savage Inn a large flat-bed cart was biding its time behind a four-horse team. Upright in the back of it was a barrel of fresh water, and a lad with a bucket, who cheerfully doused them as they were clambering aboard. This did not even come close to making them clean, but it knocked away what was more solid, and diluted what was more wet, and made them feel better. Best of all, it did not take very long. They threw the empty barrel out on to the ground. Of those who’d taken part in this project, half had escaped via the broken privy and would be going out via the prison gate, and two others had come up via the brothel. These two now walked away. Jimmy, Danny, Tomba, Saturn, and Daniel lay side-by-side in the bed of the wagon. The lad flung a tarp over them. They kicked off fouled boots and breeches as the wagon negotiated the labyrinthine ways of the
rules
. Anyone who tried to track them would find an obvious trail
of discarded clothing across Prujeon Close, Black and White Court, and other such attractions. But then they would come out into The Great Old Bailey, a broad and busy London thoroughfare, and not know which way to turn. For once the cart had gone beyond that point, they took care to throw no more clews out of it.

Southward, The Great Old Bailey ran to Ludgate. Thence, under the name of Water Street, it went to Black Fryars Stairs along the river.

Northwards, a stone’s throw away, the Court of Sessions lay on the opposite side of the street, and just up from that was Newgate Prison. A pursuer might be forgiven for supposing that the escapees would have turned south toward the river and freedom, not north toward judgment and the worst prison in the city. But north was where they went, and in a very short time the wagon had stopped. Saturn stood up, shouldering the tarpaulin aside, and fetched a lanthorn from the driver. Jimmy, Danny, and Tomba sat up and looked about, bewildered. They were at a crossing of The Great Old Bailey with another street, even broader. That street was bridged, only a few yards away, by a mighty turreted Gothick castle that brooded over the square, and barred the great way with a portcullis.

“Newgate Prison,” Jimmy said.

“Do not attend too much to the low dark places,” said Saturn, opening the lanthorn’s shutters, “but elevate your gaze, and regard the great treble window, there, above those statues.” He looked up to demonstrate. The windows in question were thirty feet above the level of the pavement. A single candle was gleaming between the iron bars. It leapt up, briefly illuminating a face—but only long enough for the flame to be blown out. And yet in that instant the face had been recognized.

“Da—” cried Jimmy, but the final consonant was muffled by the hand of Tomba, which had clamped down over his mouth.

From that alone, Jack Shaftoe might have guessed who was in that wagon; but Saturn now removed all doubt by playing the lanthorn-beam over the faces of Jimmy, Danny, and Tomba in turn. Then, finally, he illuminated Daniel. For that they’d escaped was only part of what had to be communicated to Jack; who was responsible for it was as important.

“You must all fly like birds,” Jack said. He was not shouting, but somehow projecting his voice right at them. “Fly, and stop for nothing until you’ve reached America.”

“You mean, ‘we’! Don’t you, Dad!? It’s we all who must fly together!” Jimmy called.

“If wanting, alone, could tear down prisons, all men would be
free,” Jack returned. “No. I am here. You are there. Tomorrrow I’ll be here still, and you had better be far away!”

“Dad, we can’t just
leave
you up there,” Danny said.

“Shut up! You must go now. Now! Listen. I have been saying for thirty years that I must provide for my boys. It was all bollocks until this moment. But now I’ve done it, finally! That is what you must remember me by—none of the other shite. Go! Go to America, find wives, have children, tell them what Grandfather did for his sons—and tell them they’re expected to do no less. Good-bye!”