Elyse Mady by The White Swan Affair

“We don’t run a coaching inn, soft beds and pillows for all. How many bodies you think we’ve got here?”
    “I’m sure I have no idea.”
    “There’s more than eight hundred behind these walls, men, women and children. They’ll share a pallet and be damned grateful they’re not sleeping on the floor.” He must have seen Hester’s horror, for he continued with brusque reassurance, “But there’s Dr. Box to tend to their bodies if they fall sick and Dr. Forde to tend to their souls—not that there’s much hope of his improving on them that are incarcerated here.”
    “Surely better accommodations exist?”
    “I didn’t say that they didn’t,” the hulking man replied with an avaricious glint. “There’s plenty can be done to make a stay more comfortable, but the prisoner must bear the cost.”
    “How much?”
    “If you’ve the money and the interest, it’s thirteen shillings, six pence a week for lodgings in the master’s side. Twenty and six, state side. No more than forty men in the master’s side, and they have a pallet to their own selves. And the right of a trade, provided it isn’t dangerous or disruptive.” He said this as though it were something to be excited at.
    “Thirteen and six?” Hester echoed, already toting up the sums in her head and blanching. In a good week, Robert had usually been able to claim twenty-five or thirty shillings after all his expenses had been paid. Now, without his income, how long could their carefully marshalled savings last? Evenly roughly figured, the totals were disheartening. “And when can my brother expect to have his case resolved?”
    “If he’s keeping company in the criminal quarters, he’ll be kept for the king’s pleasure until the next quarter sessions when it’s their turn to face the bench.”
    September. The next quarter sessions would not be held until the end of September, sometime around Michaelmas. Robert would be incarcerated in this stinking cesspool for two and a half long months, if Hester could not secure his freedom immediately.
    “Thank you, sir,” she said, trying to mask her dismay. “If I may, I will go through now and find my brother.”
    “Visitors needs must leave the prison by nine o’clock.”
    Hester shuddered at the notion of remaining in this fearsome edifice a moment longer than necessary. She could not imagine what it would be like here after dark. “My visit will be concluded by then.”
    The guard merely gestured towards the heavy iron gate that separated the outer portion of the prison from the areas inside. Her mouth dry and her heart hammering, she moved with faltering steps through the central passage, dotted with a regular pattern of thick stone columns, towards the inner gate.
    The prison yard opened before her, surrounded on all sides by three towering stories, narrow windows marching with absolute regularity across the face of the imposing inner quadrangle. In places, narrow walkways ran along the perimeter, with staircases down to crowded, stone-paved yard. The masonry radiated back the baking heat of the day, although much of the yard was already cast in long shadows, such were the height of the walls in relation to the late afternoon sun.
    There were no flourishes or carvings to relieve the severity of the soot-darkened walls. Hester did not think she had ever seen a more unhappy situation, and it was all she could do not to turn and flee. Indeed, the very design of the place seemed calculated to inspire hopelessness in all those unlucky enough to be within its walls. She forced herself to move deeper into the prison yard, putting one reluctant foot in front of the other.
    Everywhere she saw wretched masses, manacled with cumbersome iron at their wrists, most wearing clothes in an appalling state of disrepair and filth. The stench of piss and unwashed bodies caused her throat to sting and itch. She was forced to avert her eyes at the sight of a prisoner relieving himself in full view. Two men,