Place of Confinement by Anna Dean

Author:Anna Dean [Dean, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749013165
Google: Bf2PlQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0749013168
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2013-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Old Charcombe village was small and poor – and rather honest; it did not rise to the dignity of possessing a gaol. It had instead a little stone-built chamber commonly called ‘the lock-up’. Besides accommodating drunkards, vagrants and wrongdoers awaiting trial, the lock-up earned its keep by housing a dismantled pillory and the parish bier on which the people of Charcombe were carried to their graves. The building stood in the centre of the village, beside the stone bench from which the fishermen sold their catches every morning and, being so conveniently placed, it frequently contained a basket or two of ageing mackerel.

The place stank – as gaols are supposed to do, though not perhaps in quite the usual way.

The gaoler who conducted Dido and Mr Lomax down a short, sloping passage to the single cell was an enterprising man: he worked upon the fishing boats and was sexton of the church when he was not guarding the felons of Charcombe. He was a big hearty-looking fellow with weather-beaten cheeks and a knitted cap, and had neither the shuffling gait nor the blackened teeth which Dido’s reading of novels had led her to expect of a turnkey.

Though he did not lack a keen eye to his own interest. It had cost Mr Lomax a half-guinea to get them thus far – and another shilling when he had insisted upon a stool being brought so that Dido might be seated during the interview.

‘Five minutes,’ the gaoler declared as he opened the cell door. ‘I can’t be allowing y’more than that. For it’s right against the rules y’being here at all. And if I’d not got such a soft heart…’

‘You would be a good deal poorer,’ Mr Lomax finished for him.

‘Aye, that I would!’ The gaoler laughed delightedly, pushed open the creaking door and set the stool down inside the cell. ‘Five minutes,’ he reminded them as he stepped back for them to enter.

Dido suspected that his notion of five minutes was vague – for she doubted he possessed a watch, and she fervently hoped that his ideas erred in the right direction, for five minutes would certainly not settle all the matters she wished to discuss.

The cell was not well lit, but sufficient light fell through a grille in the door and a narrow barred window for Dido to make out Tom, with his legs in irons, crouching upon the edge of the bier which would seem to be serving as his bed. He presented a sorry sight. His coat was gone, his shirt was torn open at the seam of the shoulder, his smooth buckskin breeches were grimy at the knees, and his cheeks were crusted with two days’ growth of beard.

He sat up straighter as the gaoler withdrew, rattling the long chain which ran from his leg irons to a bolt in the wall. ‘Have you found the girl?’ he demanded.

‘No,’ began his father, ‘there is no trace—’

‘You must find her,’ Tom interrupted. ‘It is the only thing that can save me.

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