The Marshalsea Prison stood a little back from the street, its entrance dominated by a turreted lodge. Ned and his employees were marched through the main gate and into a bare side room opposite the porter’s office. The door slammed shut behind them, and a key grated in the lock. Peter sank to the ground against the wall, and Jack huddled next to him.
“What now?” Ben, the other journeyman, asked.
Ned shrugged helplessly. His only previous experience of English prisons had been a short spell in the nearby Compter. Then there was that night in the Doge’s cells in Venice… Ned shuddered and pushed the memory aside.
“They call this the Pound,” said Nicholas, the oldest of Ned’s three apprentices. He boosted himself up on the wall and grabbed the bars of the high narrow window, trying to see out. “They’ll leave us here until they find a room for us.”
“Better than this one?” Jack said, his expression hopeful.
Nicholas looked at their master and jumped down. “Aye, if we can pay for it.”
“And if not?”
“If not they put us in the Common Side, where you’ll count yourself lucky to have stale bread once a day, and the rats come in the night to eat your face.”
He scrabbled in the air with fingers hooked like rats’ claws and chittered at Jack, who shrank back against Peter’s side.
“Stop affrighting the boy,” Ben said.
“It’s naught but the truth.”
“And how come you know so much about it?”
“My father died here,” Nicholas said softly. “Fell into debt, couldn’t pay back his creditors fast enough to get him out of here. He let the gaolers starve him to death rather than leave mother and me penniless.”
No one had anything more to say after that, and they all sat in miserable silence, awaiting their fate. The church bells had tolled noon and were just starting to mark the quarter hour when the sound of the door being unlocked roused them all from their separate reveries.
A fat, ill-favoured man with a red nose and a scrubby, greying beard entered the Pound, flanked by two guards with cudgels. He flourished a scrap of paper ostentatiously.
“Edmund Faulkner, proprietor of the Sign of the Parley?”
“I am he,” Ned replied, stepping forward.
“And these are your hirelings? Benjamin Wyatt, Peter Brown, Nicholas Piper, John Harris, John Fellowes?”
“Harris isn’t here. He didn’t turn up for work this morning.”
The gaoler raised a bushy eyebrow. “Five, then. Perhaps six. Let’s call it ten shillings a week for the lot, since the boy won’t take up much room.”
“Ten shillings for what?”
“A room in the Master’s Side. Food will be extra, of course.”
“Ten shillings? That’s more than I pay this lot a month.”
“Ten now, or twelve in arrears.”
Ned sighed and took out his purse. “Ten it is, then.”
The gaoler pocketed the coins and they were led out of the Pound and across a narrow gloomy yard, cut in two by a high wall that almost reached the top of the upper storey.
“What’s on the other side?” Ned couldn’t resist asking.
“The Commons.”
“And why’s the wall so high? To stop them getting out?”
“Oh God bless you, no, sir. That’s so the folks on the Master’s Side don’t have to see ’em. Not a pretty sight, believe you me. But you keep paying, sir, and you won’t have to find out, will you?”
The room was on the upper floor, just off a dark stairwell. No more than a dozen feet across in either direction, it held two beds and a battered worm-eaten chest with rusty hinges. There was no fireplace, and its single unglazed window looked out over the courtyard. Not much chance of escape, then. Once upon a time he might have chanced a climb up to the roof, but the loss of his hand had put paid to such adventures.
“Could be worse,” Peter said, throwing himself down on one of the beds. “Could be six of us in here, not five.”
“I don’t know why you sound so cheerful,” Nicholas replied. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re in prison. Suspected of sedition. You know what that means.”
He looked around the company, but no one answered.
“We’ll all be questioned,” he went on. “Probably tortured.”
Jack turned pale.
“They can’t do that,” Peter said. “It’s contrary to the statutes of the realm.”
“Hark at the good doctor of law, there.” Nicholas pulled a face. “What do you know, clotpole?”
“I may not be quick-tongued like some fellows,” Peter replied, “but I can read as well as any of you. And I was a copyist at Lincoln’s Inn Fields before I got apprenticed to Master Faulkner.”
“Aye, we know, you were all set for a fine career before–”
“Enough.” Ned glared at both apprentices. “Go on, Peter.”
“Well,” he said, “according to the law, they’ll need written approval from the Privy Council, and that’s only done in cases of suspected treason.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Jack. “We haven’t done nothing wrong, have we?”
Ned turned away and looked out of the window. Let them hold on to hope as long as they could. Sedition was close enough to treason to make no odds, and the permission of the council could easily be sought after the fact. He clenched his good hand around his metal fist. Sweet Jesu, let it not come to that.
“Where is Harris, anyway?” Nicholas said to no one in particular. “Strange he didn’t come into work today. Suspicious, even.”
“You think he betrayed us?” Ben asked.
“He’d never do a thing like that,” said Jack. “He’s my best friend.”
They fell silent for a moment, and Ned imagined Peter looking crestfallen.
“I think,” Nicholas said, “that he’s a craven turncoat who cares more for his own good name than the wellbeing of his friends. He always thought he was better than us.”
“That’s not true,” Ben said. “He’s a good, conscientious worker, that’s all. Master Faulkner was lucky to get him.”
Ned smiled bitterly to himself. Anyone would think I wasn’t here. God knows I wish it were so.
A stir of movement by the gatehouse caught his eye, and his heart leapt as a slight, fair-haired figure emerged into the yard, accompanying the fat gaoler. Gabriel. But was he a visitor, or had he been dragged into this mess? Ned watched the two men cross the yard, his stomach churning with fear. It felt like an eternity, but at last footsteps sounded on the stair outside, followed by the rattle of locks and bolts being unfastened. The door swung open and Gabriel stumbled over the threshold before it slammed shut behind him.
Ned crossed the cell and caught Gabriel, who clung to him for a moment like a drowning man to a timber. The actor smelt of sawdust and greasepaint and tobacco, and Ned swallowed past the tightness in his throat.
“They told me you’ve been accused of printing seditious ballads,” Gabriel said, releasing him at last. He put his hands on Ned’s shoulders and gazed into his eyes. “Tell me it isn’t true.”
“I swear, on my honour. For what that’s worth.”
“Then why–?”
Ned drew him aside. Jack had produced a set of knucklebones, and he and Nicholas were playing against one another in the space between the two beds, watched by their fellows.
“I was the one who kicked off that business in Kent. If Selby had connections among Walsingham’s men, he could have found out. And we know he got a message out, before–”
Gabriel shook his head. “He couldn’t have found out you were responsible. If he’d known before Mal arrived, things would not have gone half so smoothly. And there was no way he could have found out afterwards, surely?”
“Perhaps you’re right. But what else could it be?”
“There haven’t been any accusations of a, well, a more personal nature?”
Ned glanced at his employees. “You mean, you and me? No, not yet. Anyway, why arrest us for a different charge altogether, especially one so flimsy?”
They all turned as a key grated in the lock. The gaoler came in, bloodshot eyes sweeping over the prisoners. Two of his men stood in the doorway, arms folded.
“Well, now,” the gaoler said softly, “which of you wants a go first? How about you in the corner, lad? Think we’ll have you squealing soon as look at you.”
Jack shrunk back against the wall, edging towards Peter. Ned stepped forward.
“Take me first.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Grown man like you, we need to soften you up a bit first, let you see what happens to the men in your care if you break the law.”
Ned stiffened, but did not step aside.
“In any case,” the gaoler went on, “we’re having to bring in something special for you.” He laughed unpleasantly. “Bit tricky, racking a man with one arm, ain’t it, lads?”
The two men behind him laughed in chorus with their leader.
“So, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn, Master Faulkner.” He jerked his head towards Ben. “We’ll start with him. He’s your chief journeyman, isn’t he? Bet he knows everything that goes on, better even than the master.”
Ben paled, but stepped forward. Ned laid a hand on his arm as he walked past, thinking to say something reassuring, but words failed him. Ben pulled away, his face a mask of mistrust. Dear God, let this not be happening.
The door slammed behind them and the four men’s footsteps retreated down the stairs. For several long moments the room was silent but for Jack’s muffled sobbing as he curled up in the corner of the room, head buried in his arms.
“Cowards and filthy sodomites, the pair of you!” Nicholas pressed his back against the side of the door as if he could squeeze out through the narrow gap. “I hope they bugger you both with red hot irons until you plead for death.”
Ned swallowed. The thought had crossed his own mind more than once; it was the kind of poetic justice that men like their captors would favour.
“I hope they take you next,” Ned said to Nicholas in a low voice. “And be ready with plenty to tell them. They never believe a man’s word against that of his master, not unless they torture him to be sure. Their threats to me were just words, meant to unman me; you’ll they’ll take apart without a second thought.”
Nicholas turned as grey as the wall behind him. Ned went to stand by Gabriel, staring out at the yard.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Gabriel murmured. “They’ll come for us eventually, you know.”
“I know. I just hope to God that Mal can get us a pardon before it’s too late.”