The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(19)

A king who would be thrown into prison by the end of the play. Fate had a twisted sense of humour.



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?”