to the Far Blue Mountains (1976) (9 page)

"Aye, so you did, but there's a voice louder than mine that says back you go, so into the irons it is."

"Sorry," Feghany said to me, "but it's no doing of the guard's. Remember him.

Later he may take them off, if you've a bit of the necessary."

"Now hold up there!" the guard protested. "Not so loud!"

Feghany slapped me on the shoulder and something cold touched my neck below the collar. "There! Don't worry now!"

When they had gone I put my hand inside my collar. A thin bit of metal. A Kate with which to pick the lock.

There was no time to waste. I was bound for a dungeon and more questions. I was headed for torture that could only end in death.

So what was to be done must be done tonight.

I heard the yowlings and screams that came from the cells and the larger rooms below where the prisoners mingled.

I checked the bars at the window again. Rain and wind had done their worst with the exposed walls, and some of the bars were loose in their sockets.

I was devoutly grateful. Gripping the pick in my hand, I went to work to break away the stone, scratching away with my lock-pick at the crumbling edge of the socket.

Then, putting down the pick, I took the bars in my two hands and strained, pushing them out. The bars gave a little, then held. I worked longer, then hearing footsteps in the passage I sat down on my bench, leaning my elbows on my knees, my back to the door. There was a momentary pause outside my door as the guard peered through the tiny window, then went on.

Once more I returned to the bars. If I could but remove two, at most three, of the uprights, and one of the horizontal bars, I could get myself through. I worked, picked away very carefully. Then I tested one of the bars. My strength served me well now, for the bar gave. Then as I exerted more pressure, the bottom moved outward.

Very carefully I extracted the top from its socket and placed it on the floor.

The second bar was more stubborn. Again and again I strained and worked at it.

At last the bottom came loose and it joined its mate on the floor between myself and the door.

The horizontal bar was not so deeply set, and the grains of rock came loose each time I scraped with the pick. The wall was old and crumbling. By this time I was soaked with sweat and my knuckles were scraped and torn. It was after midnight before I had removed the third bar, and by that time the prison was quiet.

Carefully, I moved the heavy bench under the window. I sacrificed my coat to cover the irons on my bed and give some shape of a man lying. My foot was on the bench when suddenly a key rattled and the door behind me opened.

"Ah!" It was Henry Croppie. "Caught!"

He sprang to seize me from behind, but his foot landed on the iron bars which rolled under him. His feet shot up and he fell.

Turning from the bench, I met him as he rose to come at me, and I hit him.

My fist was a hard one. It caught him on the nose and I felt the bone give way.

He went almost down, then lunged up, reaching for me with his hands.

Seizing one of his hands, I wrenched it quickly behind his back and shoved up in a hammerlock, an old wrestling trick. He started to cry out and I slammed him down upon the floor and knocked him out.

There was nothing for it. To try rushing away down the passage would but lead me to another heavy door, and to more guards. The window it must be.

Leaping up on the bench, I thrust myself through and pulled my legs up while behind me I heard grunts and spitting and coughing amid the rattle of chains.

I looked down, and the stomach went out of me. The wall on which I pinned my hopes was at least twenty feet down and scarcely two feet wide. I might drop and reach it, but the chances were greater that I would slip off. For a moment I hesitated. To slip from that wall meant a drop of at least thirty feet. I looked up.

The edge of the roof was scarcely four feet above my window top. Gripping the bars I turned my back to the outer night and stood up on the outside sill, shifting my hands higher. Gripping a bar with one hand, I reached up, let go the gripping hand, and caught the roofs edge. Very carefully I pulled myself up and over the edge, to lie gasping on the leads.

Sweat was dripping from me. I rubbed my hands as dry as might be and began to edge myself along the leads. It was very wet and slippery, and if I started to slide there was small hope for me but death on the rocks almost sixty feet below.

Edging along, I reached the far edge of the building. And there just below me was another leaded roof, not six feet down. I went over the edge and I ran along the peak of the roof for at least fifty feet. There was a small attic window and I tested it with my hands. The wood frame was old and crumbling and I managed to force the window, and stepped into what seemed like an empty room, musty with long dead air. A faint light came from another window. I crossed and opened the door into a hallway.

If I was still within the bounds of Newgate it must be the quarters of the gaoler. Yet I believed the building was one adjoining the prison. At the end of the hall the door was shut and tight. I could force it in the time allowed me.

Turning swiftly, I went down the hall to a window at the far end. In a moment I was once more in the cool night air with a faint mist of rain on my face, and I was on the leads of another roof.

Some distance off, on still another roof, was a lower window. I went swiftly along the roof. Time was running out and I must be away, to Southwark and the house of Brian Tempany where horses awaited.

From roof to roof I went, then to the window. It was slightly open!

Pulling it wider, I stepped in.

There was a sudden gasp.

I pulled the window shut, turning as I did so. Somewhere beyond the clouds there was a moon, and a vague light entered the room.

A girl was sitting up in bed, clutching the bedclothes to her. I made out what seemed to be a young and pretty face, tousled hair, and wide eyes.

"Please! Don't be frightened. I am just passing through."

"You are from Newgate," she said.

"I won't be long," I said cheerfully, "if I do not keep moving, or if you should scream to warn them."

"I shall not scream if you do me no harm," she replied coolly. "My father died in Newgate, for debt, and I have no love for them.

"Go down the stairs." She pointed. "The door opens on another street. Cross it and go down the side street. I wish you luck."

"Thank you," I said, and did as she suggested, closing the door softly behind me. Once in the street, all was dark and still. I ran, swiftly and on light feet.

Soon I crossed a square, then another. St. Paul's loomed. I slowed to a walk and crossed the street, moving toward the bridge to Southwark.

Tempany's house was dark and silent. For a time I waited in the shadows, studying it. There seemed to be nobody about, yet it might be a trap. It was unlikely that anyone would suspect that I would come here, yet on the other hand, they were none too sure of Tempany's loyalty, either, because of his association with me.

Must it be always dark and raining when I came to this house? I entered the paved court and suddenly saw a thin thread of light from a window. Someone was here. Should I go directly to the stables? Or should I rap on the door? Yet who would be here? Tempany was gone; so was Abigail.

At the door I tapped lightly, and almost at once there was a response from within the house. The door opened and a tall figure loomed. It was Lila, Tempany's housekeeper and sometimes maid to Abigail.

"Ah? It is you is it?" she demanded accusingly. "If you have come for horses they are there, in the stable."

Lila was a big woman, strong as an ox and just as formidable. But she was expecting me. She led the way to the kitchen and waved me to a table. She had a pot on, and she filled a tankard with ale. Then she put food on the table, working swiftly and smoothly. I fell to, hungry as a maunder's child, and the food was good. Nay, it was excellent.

She went into another room, and when she returned she had a black cloak, voluminous and warm, a hat, and a sword, as well as a brace of pistols and a bag of silver. "You'll be needing these. Peter Tallis let me know."

Overwhelmed, I could only thank her.

"Bother!" she said sharply. Then she turned on me. "How's my young lady? Have you seen her at all?"

"She's at sea, bound for America," I said, "where I hope to follow."

"You'll take me with you?" she asked, suddenly.

I could only gulp, then swallow. "What ... what did you say?"

"You must take me to America," she said. "I will not be left here with herself off across the world needing nobody knows what, and she alone with all sorts of man-creatures and no woman by. She wouldn't let me go, but you will. Take me, Barnabas Sackett."

"Take you?" I repeated the words stupidly, appalled at the thought of traveling so far across the country with this large woman, not fat mind you, but broad in the shoulder and beam, and strong. "What of the house? Did not Captain Tempany leave you in charge?"

"That he did, and a lonely life it is, so I sent for my brother, and he has come along. He will stay whilst I am gone."

"A brother?" Somehow I had never grasped the idea that there might be another such. One I could accept, but two?

"Aye." He came in from the hall then, a man as big as two of me and with hands like hams. "I'll guard well the house, Sackett, as well as if it were my own, and you be takin' the lass here. She'll be happier in America with her mistress, for she's done nothing but worry since they left."

"You don't understand," I said patiently. "We go where there are savages. To a wild land. I do not know how I am even to get there myself, let alone take a woman with me."

"Wherever a man can go, I can go," Lila said calmly. "And whatever the hardships, I'll put up with them. My folk were fisherfolk and well I know the way of boats and sails. I can do as much as any man ... as any two men."

"As for the savages," her brother said, "if they molest my sister, God have mercy on them, for she will not!"

No protest I could utter stirred her resolution one whit. She would go with me, and not only that but she had already packed and had our horses saddled.

Still arguing, I got to my feet, belted on the sword, and took what she had handed me. I donned the cloak.