Dudley - The Blind Beak

The Blind Beak

Ernest Dudley

Ernest Dudley 1954

Ernest Dudley has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 1954 Robert Hale Ltd.

This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

Table of Contents

1766AGEDEIGHTEEN

The Stone Jug

It was eight oclock one night in mid-October, 1766, the clock of St. Sepulchres Church was striking, the dull heavy notes falling on the misty moonlight air being taken up in varying tones by other clocks in the neighbourhood of Newgate Prison. In his solitary cell on the third floor over the gaol gateway, the manacled figure paused only momentarily from the task absorbing his attention. The past hour he had been twisting and contracting his hands so that they were all bruised and raw in an effort to force them through the gyves clamped about his wrists. He bent his head once more, his teeth gripping the chain linking the irons. From Newgate Street arose the hoarse cry of the night watchman: Eight of the clock of a chill October night and alls well.

Of a sudden the tensed figure in the cell breathed a low hiss of elation as he dragged one hand free. Using his liberated hand to grip the iron clapped around his other wrist he wrenched at it all the harder. Spurred on by his initial triumph, his youthful features contorted as the handcuffs edge bit cruelly into his flesh. He dragged and wrenched until suddenly his other hand drew free. He let the manacles fall to the floor, chafing and massaging his numbed and cramped fingers. They were strong-looking hands, small but sinewy and tapering from broad palms. The long, dark eyes, set deep in his face aglisten with sweat, gleamed beneath their straight somewhat craggy brows, giving his expression a kind of devilish lift so that he appeared aged beyond his mere eighteen summers. Small wonder you were so dubbed, Nick, red-haired and sulky-mouthed Doll Tawdry would tell him, lying in his embrace in the St. Giless stew. For Satan himself looks out of that face of yours, my darling.

Both hands free at last, Nick Rathburn bent all his efforts to release himself from the fetters encumbering his ankles. He inserted the broken and rusted nail, prised three weeks earlier from the heavy oak floor of his cell against just this very moment, in the huge padlock attaching the chain of his fetters to a heavy iron staple driven deep into the floor.

Nearly an hour later the moonlight which slanted through the barred window high in the cell-wall had swung across the floor to leave him shadowed, an engrossed, graven figure of consummate patience. A rasping click gladdened his heart and the padlock yielded. He was no longer held to the floor but able to move about his cell as much as his leg-irons would permit him. Without a pause to rest himself he crouched upon his haunches and proceeded to twist the chain attaching the iron rings clamping his ankles, so he could obtain some leverage. He could not bite off the groan between his clenched teeth as he tugged with both hands, his biceps bunched, the sweat pouring down his face to drip off his upper lip. Suddenly the chain burst asunder at its weakest link.

With a shuddering sigh he fell backwards to stretch his length on the floor, his heart pounding in his ears. A burst of raucous laughter came from the Condemned Hold beneath, wherein those felons due for the ropes-end at Tyburn were crowded in filth and darkness, the squeak of a fiddle, and then from the womens cell arose the shrieks of a lunatic prisoner in anguish over her new-born child who had died earlier that day. Nick listened to her cries, to be followed inevitably by the shouts and curses of the warders, then more screams of pain from the woman which died away into a low whimpering before the kicks and blows of her captors.

Two years in Newgate had sharpened to a razor-edge keenness his sensibilities, already tempered and toughened by the vicissitudes he had endured before his incarceration: his earliest remembrance was being found, ragged and emaciated nigh unto death in a corner of Rathburn Yard, a noisome Holborn alley, by a chimney-sweep in need of a boy to climb the chimneys. He had at length run away from his brutal employer to make himself despotic ruler of as desperate a band of thieving, rapacious children as ever St. Giless Rookeries spewed up to haunt Londons streets. He vowed to himself even as he had been borne off from Bow Street to Newgate he would not long languish in stench and corruption to wait for gaol-fever to claim him, or rot into premature old age, candidate for the burial-ground or dissecting-table before his time. He would surely find a way to freedom and life, even the uncertain dangerous existence he had led in Londons underworld.

To this end he had sought out those of his companions in wretchedness and horror whom he knew might offer him a tid-bit of advice, a low-voiced hint, a fragment of reminiscence of some past prisoner who had escaped from even so formidable a Stone Jug as Newgate. He had speedily learned from cheats and sharpers that deceiving dexterity of the hand which enabled him to throw a loaded dice or marked card, using his winnings to bribe his gaolers in return for food and clothing.

There had also been that drunken Grub Street hack, long languishing in Newgate for some debt, who had encouraged him to acquire the knowledge of reading and writing. You have the face of a sharp fellow, Nick; a little learning would sit neat upon your shoulders. This individual obtaining for him a battered copy of the Bible and sundry newspapers, together with writing-materials, Nick, realizing the material use to which he could put the teaching he absorbed, allowed himself to be persuaded to equip himself with the rudiments of learning. His progress was so rapid, however, his aptitude so marked, as to arouse the scribblers wonder. You may not know who your parents were, but I vow you were born of no ordinary folk. Which speculation, while it momentarily amused him, occasioned Nick, engrossed as he was with plans for the future when he should be clear of his present frustrating circumstances, to dwell no time at all upon the past and insoluble riddle of his origin.

When, having noted and stored up all the relevant intelligence and knowledge he could and judging the opportunity to be ripe, he had feigned sickness, and, oiling a turnkeys palm to facilitate the transfer, had been shifted, though still heavily fettered, from the nauseous dungeon wherein he lay to his present, relatively airy cell. The Sessions had begun that day and would continue the next two or three days. Within this time he needs must crack the Stone Jug. Scores of prisoners had to be escorted through to the Justice Hall in the Old Bailey every day and carefully guarded while on their way to and from the prison and the court. Most of them would be awaiting this chance to make some desperate attempt at escape. During this time therefore it would be quite natural for the turnkeys to slacken their vigilance over the young felon, supposedly ailing, in the gateway cell. Early that evening one of the underturnkeys had brought his meal. After the mans customary examination of his fetters and manacles, Nick had begged him to return later in the evening with a jug of beer. To this request the other replied he was too busy to pay another visit to the cell until the following morning, which was in fact precisely what Nick had been counting upon in order to be left the remainder of the night uninterrupted.

Getting to his feet Nick delighted in the new-found freedom of his legs as he stretched them for a few moments. He could move about his cell now, impeded only by the iron bands encircling his ankles. Utilizing the same rusty nail that had secured his freedom from the handcuffs, he probed and prised at the hinges of his leg-irons. Nearly another hour elapsed before first one and then the other ankle was free.