The Prince of Eden (3 page)

Jawster felt old, wrinkled, without wits. "Leave England, sir?'*

"It would be safer, at least for a while."

"It's my home."

"With a full purse, you could easily find another."

Jawster felt a curious anger at the outrageous proposal. "There are ten barred doors between us and Newgate Street, sir—"

"And you have keys to all of them."

Before such a confident manner, Jawster turned away. A thousand pounds plus five hundred. All the money in the world. His tongue played pleasantly about his mouth. His earlier ambitions came back to him now as something faintly comic. A piece of land all his own, a good mule, a woman— But he was sixty. The devil had come too late. He gave a little gulp of astonished laughter and moved closer to the low-burning lantern on the table. A thought came to him, pleasing in that it was a diversion. Slyly, he looked up across the lantern. "Was it you, sir, interloping in the lady's bed? Was it you scrambled to safety?"

A curious expression crossed Eden's face, partly surprise, something else that Jawster couldn't read. "That's beside the point," he smiled. "Don't you think?"

Politely Jawster disagreed. "A man has a right to know what he's bargaining for."

But again Eden sidestepped the question. "Your answer, please," he demanded. "Will you do it, or shall I move on to someone else?"

To God it was only a moment. To Jawster a lifetime. "I need an interval to think, sir," he muttered. He thought of his own death. It might come more easefully with a purse of fifteen hundred pounds.

Eden seemed to understand this. Kindly he placed his hand on

Jawster's shoulder. "Take the time," he said. "I'll be leaving in the morning. But I'll be back."

Jawster watched unprotesting as the man passed from the room. He heard, as in a trance, the elevated heels striking the metal catwalk, heard the quick scramble down the ladder.

Wearily he rose from the edge of the cot where he'd slumped under the weight of fifteen hundred pounds. He couldn't do it. Could he? Aimlessly he ran his hand over the stone wall near the door like a blind man trying to find his way down a street. In spite of the chill he began to sweat and he had an appalling thirst.

In an attempt to leave both discomforts behind, he hurried out onto the catwalk and quickly withdrew the ladder, as though to put distance between him and the temptation below. His eyes scanned the darkened cell.

As well as he could make out, everything was as he had left it, the prisoners sleeping, with the exception of the two bullies, and they sat erect, vigilantly guarding the prostrate young woman.

And the other? Where was he? Frantically Jawster searched the cell, as though feeling the need to keep the man forever in his sight.

At last he found him, a shadow towering over the sleeping bodies, standing now by the heavy barred doors, as though to protect them from outside intrusions, the man himself, the Prince of Eden.

What a world of irony was contained in that cold dark Common Cell for Edward Hartlow Eden!

He held his position by the door, aware of poor old Jawster agonizing upon the catwalk. Fifteen hundred pounds! He'd not intended to be quite so generous. But on seeing the man's hesitancy, he'd had no choice.

He felt weary, yet he could not rest, not as long as old Jawster crouched up on the catwalk, wrestling with the devil. Edward watched him. The man seemed frozen in his indecision. Finally, as though tired of the battle, the old turnkey fled back to his office, there undoubtedly to seek solution to his dilemma in the bottle of port.

Edward was grateful for the man's absence and now slid slowly down the door until he was sitting on the floor, knees raised. He folded his arms upon his knees and rested his head, eyes closed.

In this double darkness he saw again the terrible scene in the courtroom, Charlotte, pitiful in her prison garb, yet head erect until the moment of sentencing. God! What had possessed the bastard? A sentence as barbaric as the magistrate himself. Yet, Sir Claudius had counseled Edward to keep silent.

Ruefully he shook his head. Silence! That silence was now on the verge of annihilating him. He'd followed his solicitor's advice, at least until they had carried Charlotte from the courtroom. Then Edward had kept his own counsel, charted his own course, which had led him— here.

He looked up as though to confirm his destination. He'd been here before, knew it well, knew old Jawster intimately. What if the man refused to help him?

He wouldn't. In the end Edward knew he couldn't. Of course Edward would have to see Sir Claudius in the morning and raise the fifteen hundred pounds. But that should present no diflficulties. And he would have to endure sermons from Sir Claudius. But Edward was accustomed to sermons. What would be less simple to endure would be his mother's face. On thinking unexpectedly of her a gentle melancholy rose within him. When would it cease to matter, the pain of that relationship?

Around him he heard snores rising. If he blurred his eyes, the soot-covered red brick walls of Newgate disappeared and in their place he saw Eden, the castle in rosy tints, and beyond, the headlands, and beyond that, the channel. It had been months since he'd seen his home.

Home. The word caused only a little additional discomfort. His eyes steadied their focus. The mud-colored walls returned and with them the smelly confinement.

Once again, he buried his face in his arms. No difference. It mattered little whether he passed time here or at his house on Oxford Street, or in a blackened alleyway with his street friends, or in the luxuriant splendor of his castle in North Devon. All that differed were the surroundings, the color and texture of walls, the softness of his pillow, the fullness of his belly.

What never varied was the feeling inside, the lostness, the abandonment, the slow even roll of the designation. Bastard.

Oh God, how he longed for the peace of indifference. But according to William Pitch, his mother's old friend, a man who'd spent most of his life searching out his own beginnings, it would never come, the relief of indifference. One always cared. And that care had terrible manifestations. The best one could hope for, according to Pitch, was an air of hopeless triviality. Pitch had in the past pointed out with kindness the difference between them. Edward knew who he was, had always known. His father was Lord Thomas Eden, his mother. Lady Marianne, the cause of his bastardy merely the absence of legal wedding vows. It was simply the world that failed to recognize his legitimacy.

Suddenly Edward hungered for William Pitch. He'd not seen him in over a month, since the scandal of Charlotte Longford had broken. Now he resolved to seek him out before nightfall the following day. He was in sore need of his wit and medicinal countenance.

The torment was worse this evening. He was shivering now almost continuously. The ache was no longer inside his head. It was something outside, something small, a noise, a smell, a voice—

"Sir?"

He looked quickly up. The ache was crouched before him, a young girl, no more than sixteen, her eyes pale and frightened in the dim light.

Embarrassed, he tried to adjust himself to her presence. "I didn't hear you," he murmured, not looking at her.

"Him," she began, "him says I should come to you."

He looked up and followed the direction of her gaze toward Thad Bottoms, a Sandwich Man and one of the most skillful pickpockets in London. The old man bobbed his head and touched his forehead in a kind of salute, as though acknowledging Edward's attention.

Then Edward looked back at the young girl. "Come to me?" he repeated, puzzled.

"You know, sir," she grinned. "Comfort you. That's what he says."

Edward stared down on her. She was thin, dirty beyond description, and wore a tattered brown dress. Her hair, nondescript in color, hung about her face in matted strands.

"What's your name?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

"Elizabeth, sir."

"How old are you, Elizabeth?"

She smiled. "Don't rightly know, sir. Him says I'm old enough."

"Old enough for what?"

She sat on the floor before him, in a childlike position. "You know, sir, to please a gentleman." Her face lifted on a light of pride. "I been in the park less than a month, but I earn more than me Mum. The gintlemen likes 'em young. Least that's what him says."

"Is your mother here?"

She giggled, then clamped her hand over her mouth. "Oh no, sir, her wasn't workin' the night we was caught up. Her was at home with me sister, swearin' at her something awful for swelling up."

Edward looked down at her, still puzzled. "Swelling up?"

"You know, sir, with the baby way she was and all and it comin' and all the blood goin' all over the place, and her swearin' at her, me Mum swearin' and shoutin' and saying the devil was going to come and fetch her and the baby—"

Apparently the remembrance of the scene had a sobering effect on the young girl. She lowered her head, her hands limp in her lap. In the faint light Edward noticed her right hand, mutilated, two fingers missing, the skin red and puckered with fresh scar tissue. Concerned, he reached for it, but hurriedly she dragged it out of sight and hid it beneath her. "Pay that no mind, sir," she whispered. "I keep it beneath me while I'm comforting gintlemen. Some don't like the sight of it."

"How did it happen?"

"In the match factory on Essex Street." She seemed ashamed that he had noticed, that she had let him notice.

"A fire?" he prodded gently.

She nodded and at last raised her eyes to him. "A turrible fire, sir. Eighty-three burned up. All me friends. That's when I quit and went to the park." Suddenly she shook her head fiercely. "I hate fire turrible. The devil makes fire."

Edward saw the ignorance in her face and saw clearly the residue of pain and fear. With gentle insistence he reached forward in spite of her protests and drew the mutilated hand forward, held it a moment, examined all aspects of the withered paw. "There's no reason for you to be ashamed of it," he smiled.

"It's ugly," she protested.

"It's part of you and therefore beautiful."

A surprised smile graced her features, as though she'd never thought of it in that way before. The good hand moved slowly up to the buttons of the tattered dress. "Shall I comfort you now, sir?"

Slowly, gently, he drew the good hand downward and held both. "You are comforting me, Elizabeth." He shifted on the cold floor. "Here, put your head on my lap. Let's close our eyes together."

"But, sir, him said I was to—"

"Comfort me. Yes, I know. And you are. Come—" Again he invited her to lie down. Clearly bewildered at first, finally she obeyed, her head resting in his lap. He stroked her hair, feeling it matted and snarled. He felt tension in her at first, then felt it gradually relaxing.

"Ain't never comforted a gintleman like this before," she puzzled.

"Sleep," he soothed.

Beneath the ragged dress he felt her frail shoulders. He stroked her hair continuously and pressed his head backward against the barred doors, and considered with amazement the persistence of life.

Being a fastidious man. Sir Claudius Potter loathed what he was doing now—breakfasting in his private chambers in Lincoln's Inn. In his world view, there was a place for eating and a place for conducting

business, and the former should have absolutely nothing to do with the latter.

Yet here he was, dipping his croissant into the cup of coffee which his clerk had delivered only moments before. Revulsion rose up within him anew at what he was having to do. As one of London's foremost solicitors with a small, though prestigious clientele, he thought he had grown beyond the point where any man could humiliate him and get away with it.

Carefully he dunked the last bite of croissant and guided it skillfully into his small rosebud mouth with the same finesse with which he guided his clients around the fine and subtle points of English law. An errant and dripping crumb fell onto his immaculate white neck scarf God, would he have to confront the man spotted?

"Johnson!" he shouted, knowing his clerk was just beyond the door.

A scant moment later, a young man appeared with rosy cheeks and furrowed brow, his plain black coat still damp from the early morning rain. "Sir?" He stood poised in the doorway, like a grasshopper, ready to leap.

"A clean linen," Sir Claudius muttered, "and clear away this debris."

The young man bobbed his head. Wordlessly he took a clean napkin from the sideboard, handed it to Sir Claudius, and hastily gathered up the silver coffee tray.

Sir Claudius held his position behind the desk until the man was done. Then he rose and went to the water pitcher. Carefully he dabbed the corner of white linen into the water and applied gentle pressure to the coffee spot on his neck scarf.

From the doorway, his clerk inquired, "Anything else, sir?"

Sir Claudius eyed the spot, less visible now. He hurled the linen onto the washstand and returned to his desk. "Tell me again the events of the morning, if you will," he inquired wearily. "Where the Eden family is concerned, one needs all the facts one can get."

Johnson lowered his head and shifted the silver tray awkwardly in his hands. "As I told you, sir, I was summoned from my lodgings around five-thirty by a watchman from Newgate. He said that Mr. Edward Eden had been incarcerated in the Common Cell the night before. I signed the release papers and was given a note in the handwriting of Mr. Edward Eden. It said that you were to meet him here at eight o'clock this morning." The man fell silent.

"And that's all?" Sir Claudius demanded.

"All, sir."

"Did you see the man himself?"

"Oh no, sir. There was quite a rush in the warden's office, all sorts

getting their release papers. A horrible crowd, sir, if you know what I mean."

Sir Claudius knew. With mild sympathy he looked up at his harassed clerk. "Thank you, Johnson. You did well. Show the man in when he comes. If he ain't here by nine, we shall close up and go home and recapture the sleep we lost on his behalf."