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.
“It may be months before I see Abigail. We must somehow cross the sea,” I said,
“and sail along a dangerous, unknown coast. And if we find her we shall be very
lucky indeed.”
“We will find her, worry none of that,” Lila said.