It was a long enough walk to Moorfields, especially since the direct path would have taken him through Ludgate, and he didn’t feel he should show his face where everyone knew him. He cut up Aldermanbury and Moor Lane rather than risk greetings from Grub Street’s scribblers and printers and ducked onto the filthy cobbles of White Street feeling content that he’d attracted no notice.
White Street was wide, for the City of London, but all that meant was more carts, more horses. The street was ankle deep in shit, rotting straw, and a mulch of whatever other matter had been trampled underfoot. It slithered.
The great bell of St. Paul’s tolled out nine o’clock, shaking the air, as Silas tramped through the mire up to number eight. It was a dark and teetering hovel even by the standards of White Street, and the front door wasn’t latched. He let himself in and looked around, temporarily blind in the darkness after the bright February sunlight outside.
There was a sharp intake of breath from right by his ear. A familiar voice said, “Silas Mason, get him!” and before he could even turn, there were hard hands seizing his arms.
Chapter 14
Silas sat in the cell and waited.
He’d been arraigned or whatever you called it at Bow Street and examined by the magistrates. There was no question but that they knew all about it, and him. He was asked about the Spenceans and talked freely, about wild schemes that would never have come to anything, about George Edwards’s generosity, and about Edwards bringing them the notice and making the plan.
It had been Edwards’s voice in the little dark hovel on White Street. They’d come for Thistlewood, and Silas had walked into the same trap.
He denied all involvement in the Cato Street business. “But we have a witness,” the magistrate informed him. “A man of good character has sworn that he saw you escaping the stable—”
“George Edwards, might that be?” Silas asked sarcastically. “He’s a liar. I was never there.”
“And can you give a location, a witness, an alibi?” the magistrate asked. “Have you anyone who can confirm where you were?”
In a gentlemen’s club in St. James’s, fucking Dominic Frey of the Home Office till he couldn’t see straight. “No.”
The magistrate didn’t stop there. He had records, of Skelton’s visit to the bookshop, of the old conviction. “Did you write pamphlets under the name Jack Cade? Have you written works of seditious libel? Have you printed such works? Have you written works of blasphemous libel? Have you printed such works?” Over and over, aimed at wearing him down. Silas stared ahead, denying it all.
Some clerk came up to the magistrate and whispered, glancing at Silas. The magistrate whispered back. Silas read on their lips, Harry Vane, and it took everything he’d learned from twenty-five years of defiance to keep him on his feet then.
They took his—Dom’s—coat. That was a cruelty, because it was cold, and because he could smell Dominic on it and he’d held on to that painful comfort. Then they put him in a cell with a number of others, none of the Spenceans, and there he sat, because he had no choice.
Edwards had named Silas as present in that stable-turned-arsenal, and if that was believed, he faced a conviction for high treason along with the rest. And it would be believed because Silas was a man of bad character now. He wasn’t a respectable shopkeeper with a home these days but a vagabond with a conviction for seditious libel. He wouldn’t stand a chance when it was one man’s word against another. And of course, any claims he made about Edwards would be seen as him trying to discredit the witness.
He should have arranged himself an alibi, had one ready and someone to swear for him, instead of trying to find Thistlewood. All he’d done was make things worse for himself, the others, and Harry.
And Dom. If this touched Dom— He couldn’t think of that. But he had to, because they had the coat, a gentleman’s expensive greatcoat, and he didn’t think they’d fail to look at that.
If there was a laundry mark or what have you to identify it as Dominic’s, a letter in some pocket, Silas might have brought his Tory down.
I stole it, he decided he’d say, because it wasn’t like that could make anything worse, but he couldn’t decide where to say he’d stolen it from. Where, other than Quex’s or Millay’s, could he have encountered Dominic?
Silas slumped back against the clammy wall. He wanted to sleep, but not in this carrion company, where every man would descend on the first to show weakness. At least he’d slept and eaten well recently. Most of his cellmates looked like half-starved, emaciated scarecrows. He’d never been the prosperous one before, but a week in a gentleman’s care did that.