The problem with insanity was that it crept up and wrapped its embrace around the damned.
It was good company at the very least.
Chapter two
Unspoken Rules
Bash
Newgate did not house men; it devoured them.The lucky ones swung, for the noose was kinder than the rot.
–From “A Warning to Mariners and Men of Vice,” London, 1720
Strange that over ten years of dedication and plotting should be rewarded with stone walls and the cries of strangers. A month of staring at the same cracks in crumbling stone, and still Edmonds dragged his heels. Though I had no time frame on capture to a hearing and then to the gallows, this was irritating at best. A scream down the hall was a pleasant reminder that it could have been worse.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I felt each incessant click like a hammer to the head.
“Must you?” I ground out.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I disturbing your quiet brooding?” Oscar Bailey said.
I turned my head, a crack that was too loud to be normal, sounding with the effort. Oscar was lying on the ground, which was inadvisable at best, tapping the sole of his boot to the ground over and over. At least his clothes were a little less rough for wear.
In truth, he appeared well for a month of incarceration and three months in a brig before that. His leg had entirely healed from when the Drake Passage attempted to sink us, and with the exception of a long, patchy beard and even longer black hair, he was entirely himself.
The truth was that Edmonds didn’t know what to do with him. A noble with a pirate’s crest tattooed on his chest. While the capture of the notorious Captain Sebastian Flynn was headlining London papers, the world still thought Oscar Bailey to be abroad in Paris, studying.
“Oh, shit!” Oscar yelled.
I narrowed my eyes as a cat-sized rat scurried across the floor, over Oscar’s stomach, and into a hole in the stone on the opposite side. The sound of its pale claws scratching, causing my ears to twitch.
At least it deterred Oscar from his incessant tapping. He jumped up with surprising grace and brushed off God knew what from his clothes.
“I am losing my mind,” Oscar declared.
I snorted. “I don’t think you are meant to enjoy prison.”
It might have been worse; Seas knew I would have time to contemplate it, but Bailey began the arduous task of pacing the three feet of our shared cell back and forth.
I leaned my head back onto the hard stone and shifted onto the bed that contained more hay sticking out of it than actually was in it. In retrospect, I couldn’t fault Bailey for choosing the floor. Even though it was by my own design to end up here, I lamented the loss of my bed. Even the hammock was a better alternative.
Mostly, I missed having Rose in my arms.
No, that was a line of thought I would not entertain. That particular path only led to madness, which afflicted half the souls in Newgate prison.
“You just had to have the last word,” Oscar grumbled, arms crossed.
Even with regular meals, he was leaner, the muscle he’d accumulated over the course of a year as a pirate wasted away at the first opportunity. He was a scrawny aristocrat once more, just as he was when I found him.
“You could have let him shoot me,” I said.
I barely recognized my voice. It was hoarse from disuse. The occasional brown water we were served never truly took away the thirst that scratched and clawed at my throat. All things considered, the noose would be a welcome friend by the time Edmonds got off his ass and got around to it. For a captain preoccupied with his legacy, he was in no hurry to secure it.
“Ha!” snapped Oscar. “And have Rose cut off my balls and run into the sea after you? I think not.”
Oscar was in a foul mood today. There were unspoken rules in our very small and very cramped cell. One of them was not to speak of her. Each man survived this torment in their own way, and not allowing myself the memory of her was one of them. It would break me, and I would have nothing left by the time they hauled me to Old Bailey for trial.
