When Ralph, accompanied by Sim, arrived at Carlisle and surrendered
himself to the high sheriff, Wilfrey Lawson, he was at once taken
before the magistrates, and, after a brief examination, was ordered to
wait his trial at the forthcoming assizes. He was then committed to
the common gaol, which stood in the ruins of the old convent of Black
Friars. The cell he occupied was shared by two other prisoners--a man
and a woman. It was a room of small dimensions, down a small flight of
steps from the courtyard, noisome to the only two senses to which it
appealed--gloomy and cold. It was entered from a passage in an outer
cell, and the doors to both were narrow, without so much as the
ventilation of an eye-hole, strongly bound with iron, and double
locked. The floor was the bare earth, and there was no furniture
except such as the prisoners themselves provided. A little window near
to the ceiling admitted all the light and air and discharged all the
foul vapor that found entrance and egress.
The prisoners boarded themselves. For an impost of 7s per week, an
under gaoler undertook to provide food for Ralph and to lend him a
mattress. His companions in this wretched plight were a miserable pair
who were suspected of a barbarous and unnatural murder. They had been
paramours, and their victim had been the woman's husband. Once and
again they had been before the judges, and though none doubted their
guilt, they had been sent back to await more conclusive or more
circumstantial evidence. Whatever might hitherto have been the ardor
of their guilty passion, their confinement together in this foul cell
had resulted in a mutual loathing. Within the narrow limits of these
walls neither seemed able to support the barest contact with the
other. They glared at each other in the dim light with ghoul-like
eyes, and at night they lay down at opposite sides of the floor on
bundles of straw for beds. This straw, having served them in their
poverty for weeks and even months, had fermented and become filthy and
damp.
Such was the place and such the society in which Ralph spent the seven
days between the day on which he surrendered and that on which he was
indicted for treason.
The little window looked out into the streets, and once or twice daily
Simeon Stagg, who discovered the locality of Ralph's confinement, came
and exchanged some words of what were meant for solace with his
friend. It was small comfort Ralph found in the daily sight of the
poor fellow's sorrowful face; but perhaps Ralph's own brighter
countenance and cheerier tone did something for the comforter himself.
Though the two unhappy felons were made free of the spacious courtyard
for an hour every day, the like privilege was not granted to Ralph,
who was kept close prisoner, and, except on the morning of his trial,
was even denied water for washing and cleansing.
When he was first to appear before the judges of assize, this prisoner
of state, who had voluntarily surrendered himself, after many
unsuccessful efforts at capturing him, was bound hand and foot. On the
hearing of his case being adjourned, he was taken back to the cell
which he had previously shared; but whether he felt that the unhappy
company was more than he could any longer support, or whether the foul
atmosphere of the stinking room seemed the more noisome from the
comparative respite of a crowded court, he determined to endure the
place no longer. He asked to be permitted to write to the governor of
the city. The request was not granted. Then, hailing Sim from the
street, he procured by his assistance a bundle of straw and a candle.
The straw, clean and sweet, he exchanged with his fellow-prisoners for
that which had served them for beds. Then, gathering the rotten stuff
into a heap in the middle of the floor, he put a light to it and
stirred it into a fire. This was done partly to clear the foul
atmosphere, which was so heavy and dank as to gather into beads of
moisture on the walls, and partly to awaken the slugglish interest of
the head gaoler, whose rooms, as Ralph had learned, were situated
immediately above this cell. The former part of the artifice failed
(the filthy straw engendered as much stench as it dissipated), but the
latter part of it succeeded effectually. The smoke found its way where
the reeking vapor which was natural to the cell could not penetrate.
Ralph was removed forthwith to the outer room. But for the improvement
in his lodgings he was punished indirectly. Poor Sim had dislocated a
bar of the window in pushing the straw into Ralph's hands, and for
this offence he was apprehended and charged with prison breaking. Four
days later the paltry subterfuge was abandoned, as we know, for a more
serious indictment. Ralph's new abode was brighter and warmer than the
old one, and had no other occupant. Here he passed the second week of
his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy
interest. They were carved over nearly every available inch with
figures of men, birds, and animals, cut, no doubt, by the former
prisoners to beguile the weary hours.
In these quarters life was at least tolerable; but tenancy of so
habitable a place was not long to be Ralph's portion.
When the trial for murder had ended in condemnation, Ralph and Sim
were removed from the bar, not to the common gaol from whence they
came, but to the castle, and were there committed to a pestilential
dungeon under the keep. This dungeon was known as Doomsdale. It was
indeed a “seminary of every vice and of every disease.” Many a lean
and yellow culprit, it was said, had carried up from its reeking floor
into the court an atmosphere of pestilence which avenged him on his
accusers. Some affirmed that none who ever entered it came out and
lived. The access to it was down a long flight of winding stairs, and
through a cleft hewn out of the bare rock on which the castle stood.
It was wet with the waters that oozed out of countless fissures and
came up from the floor and stood there in pools of mire that were
ankle deep.
Ralph was scarcely the man tamely to endure a horrible den like this.
Once again he demanded to see the governor, but was denied that
justice.
As a prisoner condemned to die, he, with Sim, was allowed to attend
service daily in the chapel of the castle. The first morning of his
imprisonment in this place he availed himself of the privilege.
Crossing the castle green towards the chapel, he attempted to approach
the governor's quarters, but the guard interposed. Throughout the
service he was watchful of any opportunity that might arise, but none
appeared. At the close he was being taken back to Doomsdale, side by
side with his companion, when he saw the chaplain, in his surplice,
crossing the green to his rooms. Then, at a sudden impulse, Ralph
pushed aside the guard, and, tapping the clergyman on the shoulder,
called on him to stop and listen.
“We are condemned men,” he said; “and if the law takes its course, in
six days we are to die; but in less time than that we will be dead
already if they keep us in that hell on earth.”
The chaplain stared at Ralph's face with a look compounded equally of
amazement and fear.
“Take him away,” he cried nervously to the guard, who had now regained
possession of their prisoner.
“You are a minister of the Gospel,” said Ralph.
“Your servant,” said the clergyman, with mock humility.
“My servant, indeed!” said Ralph; “my servant before God, yet beware
of hypocrisy. You are a Christian minister, and you read in your Bible
of the man who was cast into a lion's den, and of the three men who
were thrown into the fiery furnace. But what den of lions was ever so
deadly as this, where no fire would burn in the pestilential air?”
“He is mad,” cried the chaplain, sidling off; “look at his eyes.” The
guard were making futile efforts to hurry Ralph away, but he shouted
again, in a voice that echoed through the court,--
“You are a Christian minister, and your Master sent his disciples over
all the earth without purse or scrip, but you lie here in luxury,
while we die there in disease. Look to it, man, look to it! A
reckoning day is at hand as sure as the same God is over us all!”
“The man is mad and murderous!” cried the affrighted chaplain. “Take
him away.”
Not waiting for his order to be executed, the spick-and-span wearer of
the unsoiled surplice disappeared into one of the side rooms of the
court.
This extraordinary scene might have resulted in a yet more rigorous
treatment of the prisoners, but it produced the opposite effect.
Within the same hour Ralph and Sim were removed from Doomsdale and
imprisoned in a room high up in the Donjon tower.
Their new abode was in every way more tolerable than the old one. It
had no fire, and it enjoyed the questionable benefit of being
constantly filled with nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it.
The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in the wall where a
stone had been disturbed. This aperture also served the less desirable
purpose of admitting the rain and the wind.
Here the days were passed. They were few and short. Doomsdale itself
could not have made them long.
With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his temples, Sim sat
hour after hour on a low bench beneath the window, crying at intervals
that God would not let them die.