Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные .TXT) 📗

I brought Jonathan Crew to the shop! I betrayed my own father, my own mother, and poor little Millie. I… with my folly!

The knowledge of her weakness sustained her; it was rough justice somehow. Folly was as deserving of punishment as crime.

She went over it all, from the moment that odious, that wicked man had slipped the handcuffs on her wrist and had dragged her and her mother, who was half-fainting, into the van which had come to take them to Newgate. She had struggled, she, Carolan, for wild, reckless, impossible thoughts of escape had filled her mind; and one of the men had struck her on the side of the head so that she became semi-conscious for a while, until she was shaken roughly and told to get out.

It was an imposing building that loomed up before her, and she had stepped into the filth of the gutter and been angry because her shoes were splashed. Absurd … when Newgate was I opening its doors to her! Queer things one noticed in moments of distress; she remembered the French cap of Liberty and the overflowing horn of Plenty. Queer things to see at Newgate’s door; like a horrible joke! And then the design over the porch, of fetters and chains, explaining maliciously that the joke was done with. Newgate did not look out on the street; the windows showed only her narrow, filthy courtyards, as though she were ashamed that the world might look beyond her imposing facade and see into her evil soul. And the first thing that rushed to greet one was the stench that Newgate smell which made one retch in those first moments, and wonder how one could live for an hour in its company.

What courteous treatment they had received from the guards! And why not? thought Carolan in her innocence. Their guilt was not proved. They were no criminals.

How anger had surged up in Carolan then! Jonathan Crew, that sly murderer, should hang by the neck. She would appeal to the squire, to Everard. And these people should see that gentlefolk could not be clapped into the prison in this manner!

But the courteous treatment of the guards was dispensed with when it was found they had no money.

“Receivers of stolen goods,” wrote the turnkey slowly and laboriously, in the book of records. Carolan protested, but a man with a horrible, blue-tinged face and ugly red hands leered at her, and told her to be silent while their irons were adjusted.

“Triple irons,” said the guard, and then resentfully: “Ladies and gents buys off their irons … all, barring the one lot. One lot of irons is comfort, ladies, compared with three.”

Carolan said stonily: “We have no money for such luxuries!” and the guard murmured, disbelievingly and hopefully, that there were many who came to Mother Newgate protesting their poverty, but the old lady had a way of worming the coin out of their pockets.

They went, clanking their irons through corridors and down dark staircases, Carolan supporting Kitty on one side, as Millie did on the other. Perhaps it was well that she had Kitty to think of.

Kitty was moaning, crying, not fully aware of what had happened. Poor Mamma! Carolan kept thinking of her at Haredon, sitting by her mirror with Therese twittering about her. There is nothing so frightful in this world as poverty, thought Carolan.

But the most horrible moment in that night of horror was when the guard unlocked a door and they were face to face with the companions with whom they were to live in the closest intimacy during their sojourn on the Common Side of Newgate Jail. What were they? thought Carolan in horror. Not people? Not women? They shrieked unintelligibly, like untamed animals. They could not be women … not our own species. Their eyes were too dull, too cunning, too lacking in intelligence. Their hair was not like human hair; it hung matted over their faces like the manes of wild animals. Surely these were not human beings! So degraded, so vicious, so cunning, so sly, so lacking in everything that lifted man above the level of the lower animals!

The guard laughed softly, wickedly. He gave all three a push, Kitty first; Millie next; then Carolan.

“There you are, my beauties! New lady friends to join you!” What a queer silence it had been! Tense and dramatic! Then, from somewhere among that crowd of sub-human creatures there came a wail that was like a battle-cry. One creature, a head taller than the others, came swinging towards the newcomers. She was hideous; she was something Carolan had dreamed of in the days of childhood at Haredon. A nightmare… something that lurked in the darkness. She laid filthy hands on Kitty.

“Garnish!” she muttered.

“Now, lady, pay up and be cheerful!”

“Listen!” shouted Carolan.

“We have no money!”

The woman was pulling at Kitty’s cloak; and watching, while a red mist swam before her eyes, Carolan remembered now that as she lay back only partly conscious in the van which had brought them to Newgate, Jonathan Crew had leaned forward and taken the sapphire brooch from her mother’s dress.

Kitty screamed. There was the sound of tearing cloth. Carolan tried to get to her, but she was surrounded.

A face close to Carolan’s, a face with yellow fangs in a mouth through which came the foulest of breath, chanted “Garnish!” And the rest of them took up the cry till it was like a barbaric chant echoing through the place.

Carolan tried to repeat that if it was money they wanted, neither she nor her mother had any; but she could say nothing. She saw Kitty go down; she fought them as desperately as she could. She hit out at the yellow fangs, and the things swayed and fell before her. She turned, her eyes blazing, and saw Millie laying about her with a strength that was astounding. For these creatures, these ugly, gaunt things that inhabited this vile underworld, had not much strength left in them; their poor stinking bodies were lacking in vitality. Carolan and Millie were young and strong; it was only Kitty who had gone down before them. They fell back from Carolan. They were falling back from Millie. There was the big woman, who had started it, facing her now, and she fought but half-heartedly, for her thoughts were with Kitty, that easier victim, who lay on the floor with a crowd round her stripping her of her clothes. But whereas the thought of Kitty weakened her opponent, it strengthened Carolan. She gave the woman a blow which sent her sprawling against the slimy wall; she clutched at it for a moment, then her eyes slewed round to where Kitty lay. She got up and, looking over her shoulder to see if Carolan followed her, she loped over to the crowd round Kitty.

Carolan was there as quickly as she was. Millie came leaping up, her eyes ablaze with the light of battle won, alive as she had never seemed to be before.

“Get away!” cried Carolan.

“All of you!”

She seized a woman by the shoulder, and part of a dirty shift came away in her hands. The woman wore nothing but the shift; beneath, her skin was rough with gooseflesh where the dirt allowed it to be seen. Her breasts were full, and it was obvious that she was a nursing mother. Carolan felt sick.

Someone tittered, and in a second the crowd had dispersed, leaving Kitty there, stark naked, her eyes tightly shut, and blood running from her mouth.

Carolan’s eyes were blinded with tears of rage. She wondered what she could take off to cover Kitty, for her own garments now hung upon her in ribbons. Millie plucked at her arm and pointed to a corner where a big woman was squatting with Kitty’s cloak wrapped round her.

Carolan, too angry to feel any fear, strode over to the woman. Eyes followed her; jeers escaped from the lips of many.

“A fight!” said one.

“A fight between Poll and a lady of the quality what’s come to stay a while!”

But Poll quailed before the wrath of Carolan. Poll, after a year in Newgate, knew the weakness of her body when matched against one well-fed; when the girl had a month in the place, she would get the cloak back again; she would half kill her for this night; but in the meantime it would be better to hand over the cloak.