The Speckled Monster by Jennifer Lee Carrell

Author:Jennifer Lee Carrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

“Straight from the fryin’ pan into the fire,” she growled to Cawthery later, as the six chosen felons had gathered in the Press Yard hall—as grand a place, really, as she had ever dwelt in. Clean, at least in comparison to the tenements she had grown up in. As for the wards on the common side of the prison, there was no comparison.

There were six of them in all: three women, and three men. All convicted felons, facing the gallows. Cawthery was one, she was glad enough for that, though she had little doubt that he’d trot his pardon straight back to the excitement of robbing the king’s highways. Twenty-five was too old to learn new tricks, he said, and too young not to need the easy money of the old ones.

He was by no means the oldest of their little company, though. At thirty-six, Mary North granted herself the position as matriarch of their new little clan. She was to be hanged for returning to London after being transported overseas for robbing a linen draper near Cripplegate; Maryland had not agreed with her, she sniffed. She was not born to be in service, especially in such wilting heat, so she had slipped away to the docks and worked her way back home as a sailor’s dolly. Unfortunately, her husband had found the bounty on her head more to his liking than sharing her widely shared bed. So here she was.

Ann Tompion was twenty-five, same as Cawthery; like Lizzy, she had been convicted of theft. Of all of them, she had taken the steepest tumble down the long stair of Fortune: her husband had once been watchmaker to old King William himself. But Mr. Tompion had died nigh on ten years ago, and his widow, who was no good with watches, had found it hard to make ends meet. So she had met her end, as the gibe went, by stealing it. John Alcock, at twenty, was in for horse theft. Richard Evans, just Lizzy’s age, did not deign to give them his story.

He did not fit in with the others in any case. They had all heard that not having had smallpox was a condition of the bargain: but Evans’s face had clearly been cratered and gnarled by its claws. He sat alone in a corner, sneering at the rest of them.

“As if it took talent to put pocks on your own face,” needled Mrs. Tompion.

Evans responded by drinking himself into a solitary stupor.

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