Jakes did his best to look encouraging. ‘There’s more than two guineas there. Enough to live on for a good while.’
‘Not on the Master’s Side it’s not,’ Cross said, emerging from his room by the gate. He must have heard the chink of the coins. His lip was swollen from where I’d hit him with the manacles. I couldn’t say I felt too bad about it.
‘What’s your cheapest room?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s down to the governor. He’ll take a week’s rent in advance from an honest debtor.’ He grinned, his eyes glittering with malice. ‘He’ll want more from you, I’d say.’
Jakes stepped closer, towering over him. ‘How much, Joseph?’ His tone was measured, but there was a hint of steel beneath.
Cross folded his arms and rocked back on his heels. ‘Two shillings and six a week. That’s if you share a bed, of course. With two or more chums.’
Two and six a week? I could get the best room in a good tavern for less. Or a brothel, come to think of it. I glanced anxiously at Jakes. ‘I have enough for that, at least.’
‘Then there’s food,’ Cross added, counting it off on his fat red fingers. ‘Bedding. Tobacco. Coffee. Coal for the grate. You’ll want someone to wash your linens. And that’s before you start on court fees. Fourpence here, threepence there; you know how lawyers are. And clerks. Then your chums will demand you pay garnish, of course. That’s another six shillings. Oh dear.’ He held up his hands. ‘I seem to have run out of fingers.’
Jakes prodded him hard in the chest. ‘It’s not Christianlike to revel in a man’s misfortune, Joseph.’
Cross snorted. ‘It’s not Christianlike to punch a man in the face, is it now, Mr Hawkins?’
I ignored him. ‘What’s this about a garnish?’
‘You have to stand your new ward mates a drink the first night,’ Jakes explained. ‘It goes to the Tap Room.’
And straight into the warden’s pocket. No wonder Mary Acton was happy to play mistress of the bar. I clinked my small handful of coins together and felt the floor shift beneath my feet. How long could I survive on so little? How long before I was thrown over the wall on to the Common Side to rot? I thought of the corpses lying out in the yard. I must stay on this side of the wall, I thought, desperately. Whatever the cost.
Jakes settled his hat back on his head. ‘Best of luck, Mr Hawkins,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘I’ll pray for you.’
Cross sniggered. In a flash, Jakes spun round and slammed him against the nearest wall, fixing an arm across his throat hard and heavy as an iron collar. ‘I lost a good friend in here,’ he snarled, blue-green eyes blazing with a furious intensity. ‘I will not let this damned place destroy another man the way it destroyed John Roberts.
