Prison. A pursuer might be forgiven for supposing that the escapees would have turned south toward the river and freedom, not north toward judgment and the worst prison in the city. But north was where they went, and in a very short time the wagon had stopped. Saturn stood up, shouldering the tarpaulin aside, and fetched a lanthorn from the driver. Jimmy, Danny, and Tomba sat up and looked about, bewildered. They were at a crossing of The Great Old Bailey with another street, even broader. That street was bridged, only a few yards away, by a mighty turreted Gothick castle that brooded over the square, and barred the great way with a portcullis.
“Newgate Prison,” Jimmy said.
“Do not attend too much to the low dark places,” said Saturn, opening the lanthorn’s shutters, “but elevate your gaze, and regard the great treble window, there, above those statues.” He looked up to demonstrate. The windows in question were thirty feet above the level of the pavement. A single candle was gleaming between the iron bars. It leapt up, briefly illuminating a face—but only long enough for the flame to be blown out. And yet in that instant the face had been recognized.
“Da—” cried Jimmy, but the final consonant was muffled by the hand of Tomba, which had clamped down over his mouth.
From that alone, Jack Shaftoe might have guessed who was in that wagon; but Saturn now removed all doubt by playing the lanthorn-beam over the faces of Jimmy, Danny, and Tomba in turn. Then, finally, he illuminated Daniel. For that they’d escaped was only part of what had to be communicated to Jack; who was responsible for it was as important.
“You must all fly like birds,” Jack said. He was not shouting, but somehow projecting his voice right at them. “Fly, and stop for nothing until you’ve reached America.”
“You mean, ‘we’! Don’t you, Dad!? It’s we all who must fly together!” Jimmy called.
“If wanting, alone, could tear down prisons, all men would be free,” Jack returned. “No. I am here. You are there. Tomorrrow I’ll be here still, and you had better be far away!”
“Dad, we can’t just leave you up there,” Danny said.
“Shut up! You must go now. Now! Listen. I have been saying for thirty years that I must provide for my boys. It was all bollocks until this moment. But now I’ve done it, finally! That is what you must remember me by—none of the other shite. Go! Go to America, find wives, have children, tell them what Grandfather did for his sons—and tell them they’re expected to do no less. Good-bye!”
His voice broke as he got to the end of this, and he swam dimly into view once more as he sagged against the bars. Saturn gestured to the driver, who popped his whip and got the wagon turned west out of town, making a cacophony that drowned out the farewell cries of the three escaped prisoners. Their dim and distant view of Jack Shaftoe was killed by the descent of the tarpaulin. The wagon rattled away. The square was left empty. High above it, five human forms could be made out: Jack slumped against the window, and below him, in their niches, the statues of Liberty, Justice, Mercy, and Truth. These all seemed to have turned their backs on Jack, and they pointedly ignored the muffled sobbing noises that continued to escape from the window for some minutes after.
THEY STAYED ON HIGH HOLBOURN only as far as Chancery Lane. There they doubled back south toward the river, and passed down through the middle of the Temple to the stairs, where a boat waited, manned by several oarsmen who had been well paid to be deaf, dumb, and blind for one night. All five of them boarded this, and it sprang away from Temple Stairs and angled across the river and upstream, headed for a row of timber wharves along the Lambeth bank.
“There’s no telling when your escape will be noted,” Daniel said, once he felt that they’d recovered sufficiently from that brutal leave-taking that they might hear and mark his words. The escapees had been stuffing their faces with bread and cheese and boiled eggs waiting for them in the boat, and their eyes turned toward him as he spoke. He got the idea, from this, that they were used to listening with care, and heeding instructions.
“First thing they’ll do is send word downriver to look for men matching your descriptions trying to get out via