Confessions of the Fox

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

Jordy Rosenberg

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781786496249
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, 2019
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award, 2019 A New Yorker Book of the Year, 2018
A Huffington Post Book of the Year, 2018
A Buzzfeed Book of the Year, 2018 'Quite simply extraordinary... Imagine if Maggie Nelson, Daphne du Maurier and Daniel Defoe collaborated.' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent Jack Sheppard - a transgender carpenter's apprentice - has fled his master's house to become a notorious prison break artist, and Bess Khan has escaped the draining of the fenlands to become a revolutionary mastermind. Together, they find themselves at the center of a web of corruption leading back to the dreaded Thief-Catcher General... ...Or so we are told in a mysterious manuscript unearthed by one Professor R. Voth. Voth traces the origins and authenticity of the manuscript as Jack and Bess trace the connections between the bowels of Newgate Prison and the dissection chambers of the Royal College, in a bawdy collision of a novel about gender, love, and liberation. SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

PART

I

1.

JACK SHEPPARD, THE GREATEST GAOLBREAKER AND THE MOST DE-voted, most thorough carouser^* of quim^† in all of London, is bound beneath the gallows beam at Tyburn, about to be hanged—

If I am to die today, please God let it be with the memory of the taste of her on my tongue—

The two arts (gaolbreaking and quim-carousing) are of a piece. Jack is a compact mutt with an intuition for all possible points of entry, opening, and release. Whether of gaols or of women, there has never been a lock, door, window, or wall that he could not gentle open into an ecstasy of Trespass.^‡ Jack is a creature of Liberation. For him, shaking free from the demonic gloom of a detention-house is not unrelated to the scorch of a woman dissolving in raptures upon his tongue. The first releases him from the poisonous grip of the centinels—hateful husks, blights to all of roguedom, miseries of the otherwise miraculous City.

And the second? What to say of the second. Simply that he is never more free than when Bess’s quim pulses hot in the cradle of his mouth. In this embrace, his body writhes from an aching carcass of bone and skin to a lick of flame. And it’s this Transformation he needs to effect now. Ignite. Melt to soft glass—the way he does when she blist’rs with Pleasure on his red rag^*—and slip these fetters.

But conjuring Bess won’t light him up now. The noose-knot weighs heavy on his neck. For which ecstasy of Trespass has he been doomed today? The first? The second? Both?

Never mind—

This artist of Transgression is about to die.

His hands are bound to the front to allow for last-minute prayers, which Jack has no intention of making—not to the Magistrate’s God in any case. He is on his knees—his seeping, snapp’d leg hooked out at a dreadful Angle against the side of the execution-cart. A burlap hood cloaks his head, and a noose encircl’s the base of his neck—both having been placed there in a dramatic Flourish by the Yeoman of the Halter as he drove the cart through the crowd. The noose hangs in a loose slipknot, the long ends wound ’round Jack’s waist.

The wind rises. The horse scuffs its hooves in the sawdust—neighs hollowly, shaking its leviathan head. The cart trembles and sways.

A cannonade of boots stamping ’round the cart. “The hour of reckoning approaches!” shouts the Yeoman as he claps one hand on Jack’s shoulder and releases the harbinger pigeon into the sleety late-afternoon Sky.

The pigeon lifts into the drizzle, shedding mites and Fleas upon the crowds packed at Tyburn, buzzes through the mist over the red-bricked streets towards Holborn Bridge, left at the Smithfield butchers’ stalls, and arrives at Newgate to land on the warden’s stern uniformed shoulder as he glares out over the Inmates in the Press Yard, abuzz with Rumors.

Sheppard’s stowed on a ship bound for the colonies. Sheppard’s taken to the roads, headed for the Scottish highlands. Sheppard’s been spirited off by the doxies^† of Spitalfields, and is now cavorting under covers, drinking plum wine.

“Cease your idiot speculating! The poor Sinner, Jack Sheppard, who escaped the Tower Hold late in the night and embroil’d himself in immoral and illegal acts all morning, has been captured once again, and is now arrived at the gallows to meet his death on this, the sixteenth day of November, 1724,” shouts the warden as the bell-ringer clangs the Newgate toll.

Four times for execution-close-to-hand.

The dark Reports reverberate across the prison yard. The pigeon flinches at the Din, and in his struggle to launch for the chestnut trees waving in the low afternoon light outside the gaolhouse walls, crooks a claw into the thick wool of the warden’s waistcoast, snagging a stitch. A Mêlée of flapping ensues as the warden attempts to pry the miserable bird loose from his chest, drawing cries of “Floor the pig!” and “Claw the constable!” from the prisoners as they root the pigeon on.

Under his burlap hood, Jack hears Bess calling to him from her chambers high in the eaves of the bat house.^‡

The House of the Dead is the common house; the House of the Dead is the common house. All things held in common across That River. I’ll meet you there, in the Eternal Free Waste Lands, my love.

But is Bess at the bat house? Is she, indeed, even alive?

The hood smells like the shit-soaked hay at the bottom of a cackler’s ken^*. The low afternoon Sun blinks dark gold through the fibers. Jack can no longer feel his leg, but for some distant throb that seems not quite to belong to him. He breathes slowly, the bag’s muck itching against his lips. He catalogues the things he knows for certain, or near-certain.

He knows the Mob gathered around the cart must be about the largest London has ever seen. The Town is aflame with talk of him.

It had begun when Wild carried him over his shoulder from the Thamesshore to the Magistrate’s stables. With his face press’d against Wild’s broad back, he heard passers-by congregating, gawking—’S that Sheppard?? And Wild??— and then a swirling wind of Whispers, the rumor-mongers flying off to inform the Town.

Wild had taken his time at the stables, ordered the execution-cart festooned and glory-fied with flags and ribbons while Jack hunched within, bound and soaked, a pile of bloody legs and river-water.

Word had had time to spread. When Wild was finally satisfied that the cart looked pompous enough, they set off again. A Thunder had begun to collect over Tyburn—voices upon voices rising as he was brought to the gallows.

He knows they’re there to see if he’ll effect another escape—his greatest yet. They expect him to slip a file from his sleeve, unlatch his wrist irons in the Bedlam after the cart is yanked from underneath his feet, and be found later that evening quaffing ale at the Pig and Roses in Fleet Street.

A Sob rises—catches—scalds his throat.
Aurie, where are you?

The cart tilts under the weight of the Yeoman leaning on its edge—pulling the long end of the cord free from its loop around Jack’s waist. A tug and the end is toss’d up to the beam, where the Yeoman’s assistant perches. Smaller tugs as the cord is knotted tight from above.

The thud of boots hitting the ground—the assistant’s secured the knot, and scuttles off to the side. More boots walking away—the Yeoman’s job is done as well.

The Din deepens. The Mob knows what’s coming.

Heavy footfall approaches. The Executioner.

His hand is on his whip, slapping leather against his palm with each nearing step. Jack has seen enough executions to know by the sound that this is the last suspended Moment before he lays into the horse and the cart is yanked out from under him. He’d long entertain’d the possibility of dying by hanging—most rogues had—but in all his Imaginings, he’d never thought he’d be hang’d on his knees. On his knees and quaking uncontrollably. He focuses on the crowd’s roar—

“Hang the politicians instead!” “Hang the constables!” “Hang the stockjobbers and the banking-men!”—

The Executioner hisses the whip in three long circles through the sawdust surrounding the stage. The Executioner is a showman, letting the crowd build until just before the second that the Spectacle turns into furor and they are uncontainable. At that precise moment, the Executioner will let them have it—he always lets them have it—and he’ll pull the cart—

O God of the Streets—God of the Underworld—God of Rogues—God of Women, God of Softness, God of Sex-Shaking, God of Muff^* and Tuzzy-Muzzy^† and the Fruitful Vine^‡—O God of the Boiling Spot^§ please inter me at the foot of her Bed. Please—so I can still see her—still hear her murmuring—still sense her. God of The Mono-syllable^¶ please let me still smell her and feel the throb of my unnameable Something when I do—

O death that comes for me—O God of the Water-Mill^**—at least she once took me in her hands and mouth—at least she once spread her legs for me—at least I once dilat’d with her musk in every pore—at least once was I thus Found and Lost—^††

^* Deep-drinker

^† Pussy

^‡ Such lionizing of Jack’s prowess is typical of Sheppardiana, and thus signifies neither one way nor the other as to the authenticity of this document. Viz., The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard (1724); Authentic Memoirs of the Life and Surprising Adventures of John Sheppard (1724); A Narrative of All the Robberies, Escapes, &c. of John Sheppard (1724); “A Dialogue Between Julius Caesar and Jack Sheppard” (British Journal, December 4, 1725); The History of the Lives and Actions of Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker, Joseph Blake Alias Blueskin, Foot-Pad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Editor’s Foreword
• Part: I
• Part: II
• Part: III
• Acknowledgments
• Resources