What a shame that he could not attend the Coronation! Oh, he had not been invited. But then, he had made a long career of venturing into places where he’d not been welcome, and so this need not have stopped him.

The diverse parades, processions, and rites of the Coronation were attended by respectable men and women: bishops, doctors, yeomen, and earls. Every single one of them hoped and trusted that major portions of Jack Shaftoe would end up in Jack Ketch his Kitchen soon. For that to happen, though, he should have to be convicted. Specifically, he’d have to be convicted of High Treason. Mere robbers, murderers, amp;c. were only hanged. And a hanged body, entire, was a grocery too gross to maneuver up the stairs to yonder Kitchen. The penalty for High Treason, on the other hand, was to be hanged until half dead (whatever that meant), then cut down, drawn, and separated-with the aid of four teams of horses galloping in opposite directions-into at least four pieces, of a convenient size for the oil, pitch, and tar spa operated just a few steps away from here by Jack Ketch. Shaftoe had been booked for a lengthy and painful round trip via Tyburn, and only one formality prevented it: in order for Jack to be convicted, there’d have to be a proper trial; and according to the rules of such things, the trial could not progress beyond a certain point until Jack pleaded one way or the other.

Accordingly the bailiff, two days ago, had rousted him from his clean, well-lighted apartment in the Castle, and chivvied him down a long narrow alley, a sort of sheep-chute that ran direct to the holding-pen of the Old Bailey. Thence into a Yard where a magistrate (or so it could be presumed from his mien and his Wig) had peered down at him from a balcony (for it had been learnt long ago that magistrates who swapped air with Newgate prisoners soon died of gaol fever). Jack had declined to plead, and so the usual procedure had been effected: back up that alley to Newgate. But to the Press-Room instead of his lovely apartment. There Jack had been stripped to his drawers and very very strongly encouraged to lie down flat on his back on the stone floor. The four corners of the Press-Room were adorned with iron staples set into the floor. These had been connected to his wrists and ankles by chains. Then, in an uncanny prefigurement of the penalty for High Treason, the chains had been drawn tight, so that he was spread-eagled.

A stout wooden box, open on the top-therefore reminiscent of a manger-was suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room by some tackle. This had been let down until it had dangled a few inches above Jack’s breast-bone. The gaolers had gone to work ferrying lead cylinders from a strangely tidy display against the wall, and piling them into the manger with unnerving hollow booms. They had kept at it for rather a long time, and like lawyers they had cited precedents the whole way-now we are above the hundredweight mark, which is for elderly ladies and tubercular children-now we are at two hundred pounds, which was enough to induce Lord so-and-so to plead after a mere three hours-but we have more respect for you than him, Jack-so now we are up nearing three hundred pounds, which killed Bob the Stabber but which Jephthah Big withstood for three days.

And now, Jack, we are ready for you. As you’re plainly ready for us.

They’d let the box of weights down onto him then, the pulley overhead supplying all of the squeals and screams that Jack would’ve, if he could’ve. The weight had not hit him all at once, but had grown and grown, like the tide. He’d understood right away why so many of the people alluded to by the gaolers had broken, or simply died: it was not the weight, and not the pain, though both were extraordinary, but rather the sheer gloom of it. This Jack was able to master, though just barely, by reminding himself that this was not the worst spot he’d ever been in. Not by a long chalk. And this kept him settled until that thread was broken that connected him to the here and now, and his mind, unleashed, began to dream of the old days.

Through many old stories his mind rambled then, and like a translucent ghost he haunted vivid scenes of Port-Royal in Jamaica, the Siege of Vienna, Barbary, Bonanza, Cairo, Malabar, Mexico, and other places, seeing faces he well remembered, loving most of them, hating a few. To some of those persons he called out. He called out so loud that the gaolers of Newgate heard him, and came in to the Press-Room to see whether he had given up, and was ready to plead. But they found only that he was a-mazed in his own memories, and not conscious of his true surroundings. And he was in a kind of anguish, not because of the weights-for he’d ceased to be aware of them-but because those memories were fixed, and would in no way respond to his outcries. He might as well have been in a Chapel calling out to the frescoes on the ceiling: gorgeous, but dead, and deaf. One time he saw Mr. Foote, in a flowered tunic, hoisting a colorful drink on a Queenah-Kootah beach, as if drinking Jack’s health; but this was the nearest anyone came to taking notice of him.

Strangely, the only one who would speak to him was the one he hated the most: Father Edouard de Gex.

“Of all the people! I can’t imagine anything more offensive!” Jack raged.

“Yes, but you have to admit I am just the sort who would turn up in a time and place such as this.” De Gex had dropped that annoying French accent.

“Well, yes…you have me there,” Jack said weakly.

Jesuit that he was, de Gex was ready with a glib explanation: “The others who haunt your memories, Jack, are still alive, or else gone on to their destinies, and are too far removed from this world to hear you. It is only I who haunts this world thus.”

“You didn’t go to Hell? I had you prick’d down as a straight-to-Hell man.”

“As I once told you in a moment of weakness, my status was, and is, ambiguous.”

“Ah, yes-your devious cousine muddied those waters, did she not-I had forgotten.”

“Not even St. Peter can sort the matter out,” said the ghost of de Gex, “so I must wander the earth until Judgment Day.”

“What do you do to pass the time, then, Father Ed?”

Father Ed shrugged. “I seek to redeem myself, by giving good advice, and steering others, who still have some prospect of reaching Heaven, into the path of righteousness.”

“Haw! You of all people?”

De Gex shrugged. “Since you’re chained to the floor, you have no choice but to listen to, but it is your choice whether you shall heed, my advice.”

“And what is your advice? Speak up, you are fading.”

“I do not fade,” de Gex explained. “The gaolers have heard you shouting at me, and opened the door of your cell; voila, it’s morning, the windows of Newgate Prison have been opened to admit fresh air, light floods in to the place. I remain here with you. Ignore the gaolers; they are confused, they see me not, they suppose you to be not in your right mind.”

“Ha! Fancy that! Me, not in my right mind!”

“You have accepted the proposal that was tendered by Daniel Waterhouse…why?”

“Oh, I adjudged him the most capable of bringing it off. Charles White is a powerful man, but in a precarious spot, liable to be chased out of the country at any moment. I dared not gamble all on him. Newton I simply could not fathom. Waterhouse, though…he’s dependable, he is, and was in touch with Saturn, and had every incentive to see the matter through. He has already sprung the boys out of the Fleet-that explains why Sir Isaac was so furious yester evening…”

“That was three evenings ago, Jack,” said de Gex, “and they put you under these weights two days ago, on the eighteenth.”

“Stab me, that’s a hell of a long time, I had quite lost track.”

“You have held out longer than anyone; word has leaked out, through the windows of Newgate, into the streets, and the Mobb have begun to sing songs about you: