The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,32

goes there that does not have to.”

“Nevertheless, I am going.”

“At least let me have some vinegar packs made up to hang inside your coat.”

Ashton was impatient at the delay, but he saw the concern on his sister’s face, and he was accustomed to bow to her wishes in matters of this kind, where safety and care of the person were involved.

When, sometime later, provided with the vinegar-soaked bobbins, he sallied forth in search of a sedan that would carry him to Newgate Street, Jane remained where she was for a time, without moving. The thought of being anywhere in the vicinity of Newgate Prison, let alone entering it, was appalling to her. Once, coming down from Bridewell Walk to Clerkenwell, after a visit of charity to the workhouse, she had passed by the prison, and the deathly stink of the place had assailed her, even closed as she was in her carriage, and the voices of the women screaming through the bars at people going by along the foot passage.

She had never forgotten that reek of misery and violence; always now, on her visits to the workhouse, she told the coachman to turn directly into Corporation Lane and so return home by the longer route. She had felt no pity at the time and none since, only a violent disgust, and a sort of rage that people, however low their estate and however ill their deeds, could be treated thus, manacled and pent up in that festering place. Frederick had said that compassion counted for more in a judge than a too-reasonable habit of mind. But it seemed to her that anger was much to be preferred to either, a rage for improvement, for changes in the way things were done—changes that should be effected now, immediately, since the need was so obvious, so pressing. She felt this rage for betterment within her, despite the lightness of manner, the slight air of carelessness she generally assumed in the society of others.

She had acquaintances among her own sex who were zealous in works of charity, but there were none she could think of who felt this passionate need to change the state of things. No man of her acquaintance—and in this she included her brother—would think it becoming in her to give eager expression to such opinions in company; some she could think of, if they were alone with her and felt safe from the judgment of their fellows, might try to please her by pretending to take her words seriously.

These thoughts made her feel rebellious and disconsolate at the same time, a mixture of feelings familiar to her. She found herself thinking about Erasmus Kemp and wondering how he would take it if she spoke seriously to him about things that mattered to her. She could not imagine it; she did not know him. But he was different from the other men she had met. His looks and manner came vividly back to her. He had seemed to gather all the energy of everyone else there, gather it to himself and contain it and bring it to her as an offering.

She would not go on with her embroidery, she decided; she would return to her own apartment and have her coffee there, and continue reading the latest issue of The Ladies’ Diary. Much of this was written by gentlemen in tones considered suitable for ladies. But it contained, amid news of the latest fashions and advice on such matters as the paying and receiving of calls, items on history and geography and science. At present Jane was halfway through an account of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, and absorbed in the struggle to understand how the fall to the ground of an apple and the awesome sweep of the moon in her orbit could be due to one and the same cause.

9

Ashton alighted from his chair on the eastern side of Bridewell and approached the prison by the covered passageway that led toward the entrance gates to the Keeper’s Lodge. After some twenty yards he emerged into the open at a point immediately below the outer wall of the prison, whose five stories rose sheer above him. From one of these floors, as he passed, a chamberpot was discharged, and he narrowly escaped being fouled by its contents. Sounds of pain and riot rose to him from the gratings of the cellars where the condemned were held.

He stated his business to the turnkey at the gate, a man of unsavory