Murder by Misrule

CHAPTER 33

  The stench of Newgate Prison was overwhelming. Clara's eyes burned and watered, adding the shame of tears to her misery. She wanted to appear confident that her powerful friends would soon secure her release. She wanted to hold tight to what shreds of dignity she could because she feared that if she wailed and whimpered, the guards would think her friendless and treat her with cruelty as well as contempt.

  She felt screams rising from her belly, tasted bile in the back of her throat, and swallowed both down.

  She feared to weep, but she was helpless to stem the water streaming from her eyes. The stink was like a force, a gale, a hurricano of foulness. Countless years of human waste and sweat and sickness lay heaped in rotting piles of straw. The stench made the privy shared by the members of Clara's household and the other houses around their yard seem like a garden in June.

  One night of abandon in all her careful, cautious years — one single night of love — and down came her punishment, swift and absolute. From paradise to perdition in a stroke. This was Caspar's doing. Even in death, he found a way to reach out and torment her.

  The guards were not kind, not in any tiny way, but they did not molest her. They barely spoke to her. They took her mother's ring for their entrance fee. Clara did not understand how they could charge her a fee for putting her in prison, but they could do as they liked with her now. Her ring was by far the least terrible price she could imagine paying.

  They led her into a cell no larger than her room at home, but this place held no bed, no chest, no sunlit worktable. One small barred window kept the cell from utter darkness. Layers of filthy straw covered the floor, heaped up in places to form beds. One sodden corner apparently served as the privy. Two women sat in the straw, blinking at the sudden light from the open door. Clara could not begin to guess their ages. Their faces were ravaged by pox and poverty, but their limbs seemed sound, and they were agile enough as they rose to their feet. They leered at Clara with gap-toothed grins.

  "Oooo, what's this, then?"

  "What 'ave ye brought us, Jarman, me love?"

  Clara shrank back, unwilling to step across the threshold. The guard pushed her forward, hard enough to send her stumbling into the arms of her new cellmates.

  "Don't muss 'er up too much, dearies," the gaoler said with a chuckle. "I'll wager she's worth a shilling or two."

  "What'll be our share, eh?" the darker one asked. She got no answer. Whether she was swarthy from birth or from layers of dirt, Clara did not care to guess.

  The door swung shut, leaving her in a gray gloom.

  "’Er looks a lady, Millicent, don't ’er?"

  "Nar, Gracie, ’er's no lady. ’Er's a shopkeeper or a smith's wife or the like."

  "Clean," Millicent said. Clara felt thick fingers crawling through her hair, plucking out the pins that Tom had helped her place that morning.

  "Nice shoes," Grace said. Clara felt her shoes being tugged from her feet. She tried to pull her legs back and got a sharp pinch on the thigh. "Be still, or pinches ain't all ye'll get."

  "This hair's worth a penny or two," Millicent said. A ragged fingernail scraped Clara's ear as her hair was pulled back. "Reckon Jarman'd lend us a scissor if we split the take?"

  "Shoes're mine," Grace said. "Warm, they are. An’ look: they fit me perfect."

  Clara closed her eyes and willed herself into the nowhere that had been her refuge when Caspar beat her.