Dark Matter

“What is it, Mister Hall?” I asked, rather alarmed to find him there because, for all the fact that he was most reliable, Mister Hall was also rather stern of countenance and old and quiet, so that he stood at the foot of my bed like Charon waiting to ferry my spirit over the marsh of Acheron. Charon’s price was one obol, but it was a guinea that Mister Hall wanted to talk about.

“I believe we have found what we are looking for, Mister Ellis,” he said in his stagnant, muddy voice. “The head keeper at Newgate has heard that a prisoner, whose name is John Berningham, has been boasting of having paid for his garnish with a false guinea.”

Garnish was what the keepers called the bribes they extracted from prisoners awaiting trial, for their better treatment; and this they paid for with rhino, or quidds, both of which meant ready money, or cash: since joining Newton’s service I had been obliged to learn a whole dictionary of criminal cant, or else I should never have understood the very depositions I wrote down; and there were times when Newton and I found ourselves speaking to each other like a couple of convicts.

“I thought we ought to go and investigate it now,” added Mister Hall, “for fear that the man will be released, or that we shall lose the guinea.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

So I made myself ready presently, and straightaway Mister Hall and myself walked to Newgate with much ado, the ways being so full of ice and water by people’s tramping of the recent snow.

From a distance, Newgate looked well enough, being recently restored after the Great Fire, with a handsome pilastered exterior which, when inspected closely, would have yielded the explanation as to why it was also called the Whit, for, upon the base of one pilaster, sits a carving of Dick Whittington’s cat. And yet the Whit did not easily forgive such close inspection. Those foolish enough to linger in the gateway risked being pissed upon or struck with a chamber pot pitched from the upper windows and, approaching the entrance, I, out of habit, so much scrutinised these same windows that I watched not where I was going and put my foot in a great heap of dog turds, which mightily amused those wretches at the begging grate on Newgate Street who otherwise cried out for alms. I never passed these disembodied hands that reached through the grate without thinking of the gates of the infernal city of Dis, in Dante’s Inferno, where howling figures threatened Virgil and the Pilgrim from the walls and, for all that I bridled under the laughter of these wretched men and women, yet I pitied them also, for, truly, Newgate is a habitation of misery and quite the worst place in London.

Inside was yet more pandemonium, there being a great many dogs and cats, poultry and pigs, to say nothing of the roaches and rats that there abound, so that the smell of animals and their excrements being added to the reek of ale and strong water that were brewed there, as well as the smoke of fires and the cold and the damp, can make a man’s head ache for want of good air.

There were four quarters to Newgate: the Condemned Hold in the cellars; the Press Yard; the Master’s Side; and the Keeper’s Lodge, where ale and tobacco were sold and where we met Mister Fell, the head keeper. Fell was a knavish-looking fellow, with a badly pox-marked face and a nose that resembled a small potato gone to seed, sprouting several greenish hairs from his nostrils.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, grinning boozily. “Will you have some comfort? Some mum, perhaps?”

We had some of his mum, for the comfort in his strong water smelled none too palatable, and we drank each other’s health with more optimism than was warranted in that foul place.

“’Tis a great pleasure,” Mister Fell said to me, “to be the messenger of important information to a gentleman such as yourself, sir, who is the friend of Doctor Newton, who does so much to keep us all in work.” He laughed unpleasantly, and added, “I shall not keep you in suspense. Except to say that you must excuse me if my first enquiry relates to the squeamish matter of compensation, for nobody can help the frailty of poverty, sir.”

His poverty I doubted, for I knew that, as head keeper, Fell could make at least several hundred pounds a year in garnish. But I humoured him for the want of his information.

“If your information be good, I’ll warrant you’ll be well rewarded by my master.”

Fell delved into his pockets, scratched his arse for a moment, and then retrieved a gold guinea which he polished briefly on his filthy coat and then laid down upon the table.

“But if my guinea be not good?” he said. “What then? Will it be replaced by a proper yellow boy?”

“You have my word upon it, sir,” I replied, and scrutinised the coin most carefully. “But what makes you think it is bad? Faith, sir, it bears my own examination well enough, although, in truth, I’m not as well acquainted with golden guineas as I should care to be.”