Cardigan

CHAPTER XXV

We were condemned to death without a hearing by a military court sitting at Fort Hill, before which we appeared in chains. The 19th of April was set for our execution; we were taken back to the south battery in a coach escorted by light horse, and from there conveyed through the falling snow to the brick prison on Queen Street.

This time, however, we were not led into the loathsome "Pirates' Chapel," but the jailers conducted us to the upper tier of the prison, recently finished, and from the barred windows of which we could look out into Long Acre and School Street across the eight gibbets to the King's Chapel. It appeared that England treated condemned highwaymen with more humanity than coast pirates, for our cells were clean and not very cold, and our food was partly butcher's meat. Besides this, they allowed us a gill of rum every three days, an ounce of tobacco once every twenty-four hours, and finally unlocked our irons, leaving us without manacles, in order that the sores on our necks, wrists, and legs might heal.

It was now the 1st of January, 1775. The New Year brought changes to the prison, but the most important change, for us, was the appointment of Billy Bishop as warden of our tier, to replace Samuel Craft, now promoted to chief warden in the military prison on Boston Neck.

The warden, his wife, and his children occupied the apartment at the west end of our corridor; and the day that Craft, the former warden, moved out, and the Bishop family moved in, I believed firmly that at last our fighting chance for life had come.

All day long I watched the famous thief-taker installing his family in their new dwelling-place; doubtless Mount also noted everything from his cell, but I could not communicate with him without raising my voice.

Mrs. Bishop, a blowsy slattern with a sickly, nursing child, sat on a bundle of feather bedding and directed her buxom daughter where to place the furniture. The wench had lost her bright colour, and something, too, in flesh. Her features had become thinner, clean-cut, almost fine, though her lips still curved in that sensual pout which so repels me in man or woman.

That she knew Mount was here under sentence of death was certain; I could see the sorrowful glances she stole at the grating of his cell as she passed it, her bare, round arms loaded with household utensils. And once her face burned vivid as she stole by, doubtless meeting Mount's eyes for the first time since he had bent in his saddle and kissed her in the dark mews behind the "Virginia Arms" – so long, so long ago!

All day the thief-taker's family were busied in their new quarters, and all day long the girl passed and repassed our cells, sometimes with a fearful side glance at the gratings, sometimes with bent head and lips compressed.

My heart began singing as I watched her. Surely, here was aid for us – for one of us at all events.

The early winter night fell, darkening our cells and the corridor outside; anon I heard Bishop bawling for candle and box, and I looked out of my grating into the darkening corridor, where the thief-taker was stumping along the entry bearing an empty candle-stick. Mrs. Bishop followed with the baby; she and her husband had fallen to disputing in strident tones, charging each other with the loss of the candles. As they passed my cell I moved back; then, as I heard their voices growing fainter and fainter down the corridor, I stepped swiftly forward and pressed my face to the grating. Dulcima Bishop stood within two feet of my cell.

"Will you speak to me?" I called, cautiously.

"La! Is it you, sir?" she stammered, all a-tremble.

"Yes; come quickly, child! There, stand with your back to my cell. Are you listening?"

"Yes, sir," she faltered.

"Do you still love Jack Mount?" I asked.

Her neck under her hair crimsoned.

"Will you help him?" I demanded, under my breath.

"Oh yes, yes," she whispered, turning swiftly towards my grating. "Tell me what to do, sir! I knew he was here; I saw him once in the 'Chapel,' but they boxed my ears for peeping – "

"Turn your back," I cut in; "don't look at my grating again. Now, listen! This is the 1st of January. We are to die at dawn on the 19th of April. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are to get us out, do you understand, child?"

"Yes – oh yes, yes! How, Mr. Cardigan? Tell me and I'll do it; truly, I will!"

"Then go to Jack's cell and let him talk to you. And have a care they do not catch you gossiping with prisoners!"

The girl glanced up and down the corridor; a deeper wave of red stained her face, but already I heard Mount calling her in a cautious voice, and she went, timidly, with lowered eyes.

I laid my ear to the grating and listened; they were whispering, and I could not hear what they said. Once an echoing step in the entry sent the girl flying across the corridor into her room, but it was only a night keeper on his rounds, and he went on quickly, tapping the lock of each cell as he passed. When the glimmer of his lanthorn died away in the farther passages, the girl flew back to Mount's grating. I listened and watched for a sign of Bishop and his wife.

"Jack," I called out in a low voice, "tell her to find Shemuel if she can."

"Quiet, lad," he answered; "I know what is to be done."

Before I could speak again, a distant sound warned the girl to her room once more; presently Bishop came stumping back, holding a lighted candle and still disputing with his slattern wife.

"You did! I tell you I seen you!" he grunted. "You left them candles in the wood-box."

"Well, why didn't you say so before you tore up all the parcels?" demanded his wife, shrilly.

"Oh, quit your nagging!" he snarled. "All the rogues in the prison will be laughing at you!"

"Let 'em laugh! Let 'em laugh!" she panted, waddling along furiously beside him; "I can't help it. I know I married a fool. Bishop, you're a fool, and you know it, and everybody knows it, so don't pick on me, for I won't have it!"

I saw the termagant as she passed my door, tagging after the thief-taker, who looked surly enough, but evidently was no match for the dirty shrew at his heels. How pitiful and petty their anger to a man in the shadow of death! But their wrangling voices were presently shut out as their door slammed. I waited a while, but heard nothing more, so took myself off to the corner, there to lie on my iron cot and try to think.

A young moon hung over King's Chapel, shedding a tremulous light on the snowy parade. Very dimly I could make out the tall shapes of eight gibbets, stark and black against the starry sky. There was no wind; the pendent bundles of bones and chains which hung from each gibbet did not sway as they had swayed that morning in a flurry of wind-driven snow, while the brazen drums of the marines played eight souls into hell eternal.

I watched the stars, peacefully, thinking of the stars that lighted our misty hills in Johnstown; I thought of Silver Heels and my love for her, and how, by this time, she must deem me the most dishonourable and craven among men. I thought of this calmly; long since I had weathered the storms of grief and rage impotent, which had torn me with their violence night after night as I lay in chains in the "Chapel."

No; all would yet be well; some day I should hold her in my arms. All would be well; some day I should hold the life of Walter Butler on my sword's point, and send his red soul howling! Yes, all would be well —

A ray of light fell on my face; I turned and sat up on the edge of my cot as the key in the cell door gritted.

Full under the flare of a lanthorn stood a man in a military uniform of scarlet and green. Behind him appeared Warden Bishop, holding the lanthorn.

"This is the Weasel, sir," he said, "at least he goes by that name, although the Weasel I have chased these ten years was a different cut of a rogue. But it's all one, captain; he was took with Jack Mount, and he'll dance a rope-jig the 19th of April next."

"Why not sooner?" asked the officer, gravely.

I started, quivering in every limb.

"Why not hang him sooner?" inquired Walter Butler, moving back a step into the corridor. He limped as he walked and leaned on a cane. My mark was still upon him.

"Well, sir," said Bishop, scratching his ears, "we hung eight coast-scrapers in November, and two sheep-thieves in December. We've got three pickpockets to swing this month, then Symonds, the wharf-robber, is to go in February. There's no room in March either, because the Santa Cruz gang goes up the 13th – seven o' them in chains – and the gallows yonder ain't dropped last year's fruit yet, and the people hereabouts complains o' the stench of a hot day and a south wind – "

"Can't he change places with some other rogue?" interrupted Butler, impatiently.

"Lord, no!" cried Bishop, horrified. "Leastways, not unless the court-martial directs it, sir. They don't do no such things in Boston, sir."

"They do in Tryon County," observed Butler, eying me coolly. Presently a ghastly smile stretched his pallid face, but his yellow eyes glared unchanging.

"Well, well," he said, "so you are to sail to glory at a rope's end, eh? You wouldn't burn, you know. But the flames will come later, I fancy. Eh, Mr. – er – Mr. Weasel?"

"Are your broken bones mended?" I asked, quietly.

"Quite mended, thank you."

"Because," I said, "you will need them some day – "

"I need them now," he said, cheerfully; "I am to wed a bride ere long. Give me joy, Weasel! I am to know the day this very night."

I could not utter a sound for the horror which froze my tongue. He saw it; fastened his eyes on my face, and watched me, silent as a snake with its fangs in its paralyzed prey.

"Would you care to see the famous Jack Mount, captain?" asked Bishop, swelling with pride. "I took him myself, sir. All the papers had it – I have the cuttings in my room; I can fetch them, sir – "

Butler did not appear to hear him.

"Yes," he continued, thoughtfully, "I ride this night to Lexington. She's a sweet little thing – a trifle skinny, perhaps. I think you have seen her – perhaps picked her pocket. When we are wed we shall come to Boston – on the 19th of April next."

I sprang at him; I had gone stone-blind with rage, and knew not what I did; the steel door crashed in my face; the locks rattled.

Outside the door I heard Butler's cool voice, continuing: "But if she pleases me not, to-night, I may change my mind and take her for my mistress – as Sir William took your aunt – as my friend General Gage has taken your old sweetheart, Mrs. Hamilton. One wench is like another in silken petticoats. Sleep soundly, Master Weasel. If I find her too thin for my taste I'll leave her for Dunmore."

All that night I lay on the stone floor of my cell, by turns inert, stupid, frantic.

When Bishop came to me in the morning he thought me ill and summoned the prison apothecary to cup me; but ere that individual appeared with his pills and leeches, I was quiet and self-possessed, ready to argue with the pill-roller and convince him I needed no nostrums. All that day I watched for Dulcima; twice I saw her go to Mount's cell, but could hear nothing of what they whispered.

Now as I was standing, looking out of the grating, I chanced to glance down, and saw that the apothecary had left his case of herbs and drugs on a bench which stood just outside my cell door.

Idly I read the labels on the bottles and boxes: "Senna, Jalap, Brimstone, Es. Cammomile, Saffron Pills, Tinc. Opium – "

Opium? An easy death.

I gazed at the dark flask, scarcely a foot below me, but as safe from me as though under lock and key. Presently I turned around; my cell contained a cot, an iron table, a bowl for washing, and a towel.

After a moment's thought I caught up the coarse towel, drew from it some threads, twisted them, tied on more threads, and then, greasing the cord with a bit of soap, made a running noose at the end.

There was nobody in the corridor. I heard voices in Bishop's room, whither the apothecary had gone to examine the baby at Mrs. Bishop's summons. Very carefully I let down my thread, fishing for the bottle's neck with my slip-noose; but the neck was so placed that I could not snare it, and I drew up another bottle instead, bearing the label: "Ex. S. Nigrum."

What Ex. S. Nigrum might be I did not know, but hid the tiny flask under a loose fragment of stone in my flooring where a black beetle had his abode. Scooping out for it a little hole in the damp earth, I buried it, not harming my friend the beetle; then I returned to fish for my opium flask, but could not snare it. Finally I drew in my string just as the apothecary came out with Mrs. Bishop at his heels.

He stood a moment, talking, then picked up his cow-hide case, closed it, and took himself off.

That night, when the corridor was dusky and Bishop sprawled outside his door to smoke his evening pipe, I called to him and asked him for a jug of water. He fetched it and seemed disposed to linger and chat a bit, but I was uncommunicative, and presently he left me to my own devices, lighting the lanthorn in the corridor ere he retired to his room with his long pipe.

I now unearthed my flask containing the Ex. S. Nigrum, poured a single drop into my basin, filled it up with water, and then returned the flask to its hiding-place.

"We shall see," I muttered, "whether there be any virtue of poison in my Nigrum," and I caught the poor little black beetle who had come out to enjoy the lamplight.

Now as the drop of Ex. S. Nigrum had been diluted many hundreds of times by the water in my bowl, I argued that, if this solution dealt death to the beetle, a few drops, pure, would put Jack Mount and me beyond the hangman's hands.

Poor little beetle! how he struggled! I was loath to sacrifice him, but at last I dropped him into the bowl.

He did not swim; I watched him for a moment, and finally touched him. The little thing was stone dead.

That I had a terrible and swift poison in my possession I now believed; and my belief became certainty when the apothecary came next day in a panic, crying out to Bishop that he had lost a flask of nightshade syrup, and feared lest the infant might find it and swallow the poison.

I watched Bishop and his wife rummaging their rooms in a spasm of panic, and finally saw them go off with the puling pill-roller to report the loss to the head warden.

Later that day a turnkey searched my cell, but did not see the cracked corner of the stone slab, which I covered with one foot.

When all was quiet, I called to Dulcima and bade her tell Jack Mount that I had the poison and would use it on us both if we could not find other means to escape the gallows.

The poor child took the message, and presently returned, wiping her tears, to say that Jack had every hope of liberty; that I must not despair or take the life which no longer was at my own disposal, and that she, Dulcima, had already communicated with Shemuel.

She handed me a steel awl, telling me to pick at the mortar which held the stones on my window-ledge, and to fill these holes with water every night, so that the water might freeze and crack the stones around the base of the steel bars.

I had never thought of such a thing! I had often seen the work of frost on stones, but to take advantage of nature in this manner never occurred to me.

Eagerly and cautiously I set to work with my little steel pick, to drill what holes I might before Bishop came. But it was heart-breaking labour, and so slow that at the end of a week I had not loosened a single bar.

The next week the weather was bitterly cold. I had drilled some few holes around the base of an iron stanchion, and now I filled them with water and plugged them with a paste of earth from beneath my flooring, threads from my towel, and some soap.

At dawn I was at my window, and to my delight found the stone cracked; but the iron bar was as firm as ever, so I set to drilling my holes deeper.

At the end of that week Dulcima let me know that Jack had loosened one bar of his window, and could take it from its socket whenever I was ready. So I worked like a madman at my bar, and by night was ready to charge the holes with water.

It was now the middle of March; a month only remained to us in which to accomplish our liberty, if we were to escape at all.

That night I lay awake, rising constantly to examine my work, but to my despair the weather had slowly changed, and a warm thaw set in, with rain and the glimmer of distant lightning. In vain I worked at my bar; I could see the dark sky brighten with lightning; presently the low mutter of thunder followed. An hour later the rain fell hissing into the melting snow in the prison yard.

I sent word to Mount that I could not move my bar, but that he must not wait for me if he could escape from the window. He answered that he would not stir a peg unless I could; and the girl choked as she delivered the message, imploring me to hasten and loose the bar.

I could not do it; day after day I filled the cracks and holes, waiting for freezing weather. It rained, rained, rained.

Weeks before, Mount had sent the girl to seek out Mr. Foxcroft and tell him of my plight. I also had sent by her a note to Silver Heels.

The girl returned to report that Mr. Foxcroft had sailed for England early in November, and that nobody there had ever heard of a Miss Warren in Queen Street.

Then Butler's boast came to me, and I sent word to Shemuel, bidding him search the village of Lexington for Miss Warren. I had not yet heard from him.

Meanwhile Mount communicated, through Dulcima, with the Minute Men's Club, and already a delegation headed by Mr. Revere had waited on Governor Gage to demand my release on grounds of mistaken identity.

The Governor laughed at them, asserting that I was notorious; but as the days passed, so serious became the demands from Mr. Revere, Mr. Hancock, and Mr. Otis that the Governor sent Walter Butler to assure these gentlemen that he knew Mr. Cardigan well, and that the rogue in prison, who pretended to that name, was, in fact, a notorious felon named the Weasel, who had for years held the highway with the arch-rogue, Mount.

At this, Shemuel came forward to swear that Mr. Butler and I were deadly enemies and that Butler lied, but he was treated with scant ceremony, and barely escaped a ducking in the mill-pond by the soldiers.

Meanwhile Mr. Hancock had communicated with Sir John at Onondaga, and awaited a reply to his message, urging Sir John to come to Boston and identify me.

No reply ever came, nor did Sir John stir hand or foot in my behalf. Possibly he never received the message. I prefer to think so.

Matters were at this pass when I finally gave up all hope of loosening my window bars, and sent word to Jack Mount that he must use his sheets for a cord and let himself out that very night. But the frightened girl returned with an angry message of refusal from the chivalrous blockhead.

The next day it was too late; Bishop's suspicions somehow had been aroused, and it took him but a short time to discover the loosened bars in Jack Mount's cell.