‘What for now?’
‘Shaving the witch’s head when she went mad yesterday. After she started screaming and howling and throwing herself around the Hole. We’ve had to chain her and I got a barber to come and shave her head to cool her wild brain. That’s what you’re supposed to do with mad people, isn’t it?’
Wordlessly, I passed him a sixpence. He nodded and stepped aside, letting us into the dark entrance hall. The heat had now penetrated even Newgate’s thick stones and the interior was a warm, stinking fug. Water dripped somewhere. Barak wrinkled his nose. ‘This place stinks like Lucifer’s privy,’ he muttered as we went to where Joseph sat on a bench. He looked crushed and barely brightened when he saw me.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘The gaoler said Elizabeth’s run mad.’
‘Thank you for coming, sir. I don’t know what to do. She’d been the same since the trial, wouldn’t utter a word. Then they took that old horse thief away yesterday.’ He took out the handkerchief Elizabeth had given him and wiped his brow. ‘As soon as the woman was taken out they say Lizzy went mad. Started screaming, throwing herself at the walls. Jesu knows why, the old woman was never kind to her. She had to be restrained, sir, they put her in chains.’ He looked up at me in anguish. ‘They cut off all her hair, her black curly hair that used to be so lovely, and tried to make me pay for the barber. I wouldn’t - I hadn’t asked for such a cruel thing.’
I sat beside him. ‘Joseph, you know you have to pay them what they ask. If you don’t they’ll only treat her worse.’ He bowed his head and nodded reluctantly. I guessed arguing with the gaolers over money was the only way poor Joseph could preserve a little dignity.
‘How is she now?’
‘Quiet again. But she’s cut and bruised herself-’
‘Let’s go and see.’
Joseph looked enquiringly at Barak. ‘A colleague,’ I said, remembering Joseph had seen me ride off with him after the hearing with Forbizer. ‘Do you mind if he comes too?’
He shrugged. ‘No. Anyone who can help.’
‘Come on then,’ I said with a cheerfulness I did not feel. ‘Let’s see her.’ It was only a few days since I had visited Elizabeth, but it felt like far longer.
Once again the fat turnkey led us past the cells where the men lay in their chains, down to the Hole. ‘She’s quiet this morning,’ he said, ‘but she was wild yesterday. Struggled like a demon when the barber came - lucky he didn’t cut her head wide open. We had to hold her still while he used the razor.’
He opened the door and we passed through into a stink even more overpowering than before. My jaw dropped open when I saw Elizabeth, for she scarcely looked human now. She lay crouched in the straw, her face covered with grazes and streaks of blood, and her head had been shaved quite bald, the white dome making an obscene contrast to her dirty, bloodied face. I went over to her.
‘Elizabeth,’ I said calmly, ‘what has happened to you?’ I saw her lip was split, someone had hit her when they were restraining her yesterday. She stared back at me with those vivid dark green eyes. There was more life in them today, angry life. Her gaze flickered past me to Barak.
‘That’s Master Barak, a colleague,’ I said. ‘Did they hurt you?’ I reached out a hand and she shrank back. There was a clanking, and I saw she was manacled to the wall by long chains, heavy gyves on her wrists and ankles.
‘Was it when they took the old woman away?’ I asked. ‘Did that make you angry?’
She did not reply, only continued fixing me with that ferocious stare. Barak knelt close and whispered to me. ‘May I ask her something?’
I looked at him dubiously. But what more harm could he do? I nodded.
He knelt before her. ‘I don’t know what your sorrow is, Mistress.’ His tone was gentle. ‘But if you won’t talk, no one will ever know. You’ll die and people will forget. In time they’ll just give it up as a puzzle and forget it.’
She stared back at him for a long moment. Barak nodded. ‘Was that why the old woman being taken made you angry? The thought you might be ripped out of the world unheard, like her?’ Elizabeth moved an arm and Barak jumped back lest she was about to strike him, but she only scrabbled for something in the filthy straw. Her hand came up holding a wafer of charcoal. She leaned forward painfully, clearing a space in the straw at her feet. I moved to help her but Barak lifted a hand to restrain me. Elizabeth brushed a smear of dried shit from the exposed flagstones and began to write. We looked on in silence as she traced out some letters, then sat back. I leaned forward, wrinkling my eyes to make out the words in the gloom. It was Latin: damnata iam luce ferox.
‘What is that?’ Joseph asked.