The Devil in the Marshalsea - страница 3

‘A bowl of coffee,’ Charles corrected. ‘And then home. You gave me your word, remember?’

I slipped a shilling into Betty’s hand. It felt good to have money again – and to spend it. ‘Coffee. And a bowl of punch. We’re celebrating,’ I said, dismissing Charles’ protestations with a lordly wave.

Betty arched an eyebrow. There were only two reasons to celebrate at Tom King’s coffeehouse – a win at the tables or a full recovery from the clap.

‘I took ten pounds at cards tonight,’ I called out hastily, but she was already gliding through the crowds to the coffee pots hanging over the fire. When I turned back, Charles had his head in his hands.

‘What am I to do with you?’ he groaned through his fingers.

I looked out across the long, low room, breathing in the heady fumes of smoke, liquor and sweat. I would hang up my coat tonight and in the morning my little garret would be filled with the same familiar scents. ‘One bowl of punch, Charles. Just one! To toast my skill at the tables tonight.’

‘Skill?’ He dropped his hands. Charles had a pleasant countenance, his features as neatly arranged as a well-proportioned drawing room. It was not a face created for outrage, but he did his best, widening his dark brown eyes a fraction. ‘Skill? You risked everything on the turn of a card! Down to your very last farthing! That is not skill, it’s…’ He shrugged, helplessly. ‘It’s madness.’

I didn’t argue with him. Charles refused to believe there was anything more to gambling than blind luck – in part because he played so ill himself. No use explaining that I had known three quarters of the men in that hot, smoke-filled gaming room – had played against them so many times that I understood their strengths and failings better than my own. No use explaining that even half-drunk I could remember every card that had been played and work out the odds in a flash. To be fair there was some truth in what Charles said – I had taken a terrible risk with that final bet, but I’d had no choice in the matter. My life had depended on it.

Early that morning my landlord and three other creditors had burst into my room and clapped an action on me for twenty pounds in unpaid rent and other debts. The warrant had given me just one day’s grace to pay enough to satisfy them. If I failed I would be arrested at once and thrown in gaol.

Little frightened me in those days. I was five and twenty and death seemed a distant, hazy thing. But I knew three men who had been sent to a debtors’ gaol in the last year. One had died of a fever, another had been stabbed in a fight and only just survived. The third had passed through the prison gates a fat, cheerful fellow and emerged six months later a grey, stuttering skeleton. He refused to say what had happened to him and there was a look in his eyes when we pressed him… as if he’d rather die than speak of it.

And so I’d flung on my clothes and run out into the brightening streets to call in every debt and favour I could think of. When that wasn’t enough I’d pawned everything of value, until my room was stripped as bare as a maid on her wedding night. I saved only two items of any worth – my dagger for protection and my best suit for deception. (A little swagger and a few gold buttons will open most doors in London.) My creditors had demanded half what they were owed as proof they would see the rest in good time. As the sun set I counted out what I had made: two guineas and a handful of pennies. Hardly a quarter the sum I needed.

It was then that I was forced to do what I had been avoiding all day – I turned to Charles for help. We had been as close as brothers at school and at Oxford, but in the last few years our friendship had faltered. My old companion in mischief had become the Reverend Charles Buckley, a civil, sober gentleman who gave afternoon lectures to enraptured old ladies at St George’s on Hanover Square. All of this was well and good, I supposed, until he’d started to lecture me on my own behaviour. I was not an enraptured old lady. I had not seen him for several months.