Confessions of the fox A novel

Jordy Rosenberg

Book - 2018

"Set in the eighteenth century London underworld, this bawdy, genre-bending novel reimagines the life of thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard to tell a profound story about gender, love, and liberation. Recently jilted and increasingly unhinged, Dr. Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack's true story--his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox. Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as "Jack." When P falls dizzyingly in love with Be...ss, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London's newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of an oncoming plague abound. At last, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious--and most wanted--thieves in history. An imaginative retelling of Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Confessions of the Fox blends high-spirited adventure, subversive history, and provocative wit to animate forgotten histories and the extraordinary characters hidden within"--

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Subjects
Genres
Historical fiction
Novels
Romance fiction
Published
New York : One World [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Jordy Rosenberg (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xiv, 329 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-329).
ISBN
9780399592270
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

HEAVY: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon. (Scribner, $16.) Laymon's profound memoir reflects on his childhood in Jackson, Miss., and shows how his pursuit of excellence was a means to survive. Touching on everything from the racism he encountered to the physical and sexual abuse he endured, Laymon compares his childhood memories with how he feels in middle age, and offers a complex, nuanced portrayal of his mother. CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX, by Jordy Rosenberg. (One World, $17.) Rosenberg's novel is a heady romp through an 18thcentury England awash in sex, crime and revolutionary ideas. When Dr. Voth, the principal narrator, finds a mysterious manuscript at a book sale, the novel expands to tell the story of Jack Sheppard and Bess Khan, notorious thieves and jailbreakers in London, and their high jinks. FLY GIRLS: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History, by Keith O'Brien. (Mariner, $15.99.) Amelia Earhart wasn't the only female pilot to take to the skies in the 1920s, this lively new account shows, but many have been overlooked. In addition to Earhart, the book focuses on Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Ruth Elder and Florence Klingensmith. As O'Brien puts it, "Each of the women went missing in her own way." DO THIS FOR ME, by Eliza Kennedy. (Broadway, $16.) Raney Moore thought she had the perfect life. A lawyer at a top-flight Manhattan law firm, she is the mother of charming teenagers and happily married. But when she discovers her husband is having an affair, she torches their life together - canceling his credit cards, deleting his email account and shipping his belongings to his mother's house - and must determine the future she wants for herself. It's an exhilarating, if over-the-top, novel of divorce. THE MARSHALL PLAN: Dawn of the Cold War, by Benn Steil. (Simon & Schuster, $20.) Steil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, untangles the complicated politics that led to America's intervention in Europe, and focuses on the debate over the continent's economic future. Our reviewer, Timothy Naftali, praised the book's handling of "a large cast of statesmen, spies and economists that perhaps only Dickens could have corralled with ease." A PLACE FOR US, by Fatima Farheen Mirza. (SJP for Hogarth, $17.) In this debut novel, an Indian Muslim family gathers for the eldest daughter's wedding, and sets up a longawaited reunion with an estranged sibling. Mirza's book follows generations of the family as they navigate their lives in India and the United States, weathering racism, betrayals and crises of faith.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Resonant of George Saunders, of Nikolai Gogol, and of nothing that's ever been written before, professor of literature and queer/trans theory Rosenberg's debut is a triumph. This eighteenth-century, anti-imperialist, anticapitalist love story tells the tale of notorious transgender thief Jack Sheppard. A rare manuscript of Sheppard's memoirs is discovered in the present day by university professor Dr. Voth, also trans, whom readers get to know through the novel's lengthy footnotes. Dr. Voth annotates Jack's life and affair with fearless sex worker Bess, including both personal and professional details. For example, Voth will provide literary evidence of time-period colloquialisms in one note and describe an ill-fated date with his pharmacist in the next. As the antique manuscript unfolds, things grow increasingly difficult for partners in crime Jack and Bess. The deadly plague encroaches on their English hovel, as do heartless mercantilism and a brutal police force. Their fury at being squashed by corrupt institutions resonates with Voth when he is fired from the university, midproject. Both narratives come to a head when it is discovered that the manuscript has been touched by generations of editors and revisionists, and Voth must reckon with the notion that this doesn't diminish the importance of Jack's story for the trans community. Irreverent, erudite, and not to be missed.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Academic intrigue meets the 18th-century underworld in Rosenberg's astonishing and mesmerizing debut, which juxtaposes queer and trans theory, slave narrative, heroic romance, postcolonial analysis, and speculative fiction. The story appears in the form of an ostensibly historical document and lengthy discursive footnotes. In a 2018 not entirely recognizable as our own, transgender university professor R. Voth happens upon an apparently unread 1724 manuscript entitled "Confessions of the Fox." It purports to be the memoirs of real-life 18th-century British folk hero Jack Sheppard, whose crimes and jailbreaks transfixed his contemporaries and inspired works including Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. But this Jack was born female, falls in love with a mixed-race sex worker, and clashes with a ring of conspirators attempting to monetize a potentially priceless masculinizing elixir. Some of the footnotes Voth appends as he edits the manuscript cite scholarly references. Others are glosses on the 18th-century slang with which the swashbuckling and often sexually charged action is narrated. Still others recount Voth's own travails: broke and lonely, he must also contend with a shadowy publisher-cum-pharmaceutical company hoping to cash in on the manuscript's value. Rosenberg is an ebullient and witty storyteller as well as a painstaking scholar. Like the Sheppard of most earlier tellings, his Jack is an entertaining "artist of transgression" who sheds shackles with ease. Yet the novel is most memorable when evoking the pain behind such liberations: the constraints of individual and collective bodies, and the infinite guises of the yearning to break free. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

[DEBUT] A challenge for the queer author is historical representation: What was it like to be gay or trans in the past? For that matter, what was it like to be a person of color or to be female in a time when either was the basis for living as chattel? How did anyone find agency in a system designed to limit agency to a select few? First-time novelist Rosenberg takes real-life criminal Jack Sheppard (1702-24) and suggests an alternate backstory in which Jack was born female and his paramour Bess was of South Asian descent. Their crime spree is cast as a bid for freedom from the capitalist forces surrounding 18th-century London. Intertwined with the manuscript about Sheppard is a separate tale told in the footnotes-this one tracing the effort of a present-day professor to bring Jack's story to life. Or is the increasingly unreliable narrator of the notes trying to hide the truth? Both plots intrigue, and the metafiction techniques work well in this story about stories, though they sometimes divert attention from the main action. Verdict Fans of Sarah Waters's Fingersmith will find this a good companion-more political and academic, perhaps, but similarly absorbing in period detail.-Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

In this inventive debut, Rosenberg transforms the legend of Jack Sheppard, infamous 18th-century London thief, into an epic queer love story.When Dr. R. Voth, "a guy by design, not birth," discovers a "mashed and mildewed pile of papers" at a university library book sale, he becomes obsessed with transcribing and documenting its contents. The manuscript appears to be a retelling of the Jack Sheppard legend, but it contains a marked difference: Jack was not born Jack, but P, a young girl with a knack for making and fixing things. P escapes indentured servitude and falls into the arms of Bess Khan, a prostitute of South Asian descent, who sees Jack as he longs to be seen. Together, the two lovers hatch schemes that take them across plague-ridden London, dodging the police state and the sinister grasp of Jonathan Wild, "Thief-Catcher General," who has it out for Jack. Meanwhile, in the manuscript's margins, Voth suffers at the hands of the crumbling state university and its exploitative administration. As punishment for frittering away his office hours, Voth must share the discovery of the manuscript with the "Dean of Surveillance" and a dubious corporate sponsor who leers at Jack's story and, by extension, Voth's humanity. "But you yourself are a," the sponsor ventures to Voth in an explanation he doesn't have the guts to complete. Through a series of revealing footnotes, Voth traces queer theories of the archive as well as histories of incarceration, colonialism, and quack medicine practiced on the subjugated body. As the stories in the footnotes and the manuscript intertwine, the dual narrative shifts and snakes between voices and registers, from an 18th-century picaresque romp to an academic satire. Even when Rosenberg, a scholar of 18th-century literature and queer/trans theory at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, allows Voth to become pedantic, it's in the service of this novel's marvelous ambition: To show how easily marginalized voices are erased from our historiesand that restoring those voices is a disruptive project of devotion.A singular, daring, and thrilling novel: political, sexy, and cunning as a fox. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

But others say it went back much further than that. That the road to the gallows began before the Plague Ships. Before Bess. Before Aurie. Before Jack became the most notorious Gaol-breaker London had yet known. Back when he stumbl'd through life deliri- ous as a light-bedevil'd Moth.   His mum made clear she'd had enough of Jack the day she brought him to the master carpenter Kneebone's doorstep in October 1713. As she marched him down Regent Street, sweat formed at the edges of her hairline, pinkening her alabaster face paint. "Be a good girl.* Do what you're told. Behave. Don't act shame- ful," she said, regarding Jack sourly. They crossed dubious, slough- filled Tyburn and headed towards Cavendish Square. Sparrows nattered on hedges, tumbled in dust baths Underfoot, disregarding the burghers+ and high-toned ladies sweeping by. His mother snapp'd her knuckle into his ribs as they approached the brown oak door. "And walk like a lady! Try not t' stomp like an animal."   * Jack was assigned female at birth? This is a significant departure from the extant Sheppardiana. While nearly all the texts note him as "slight" or otherwise effeminate-- his wiriness and compact size frequently cited as integral to his ability to escape tight spaces (e.g., the stage play Little Jack Sheppard [Yardley & Stephens, 1885], starring Nellie Farren as Jack)-- this I've never seen. + Bourgeoisie Jack tried to imagine moving his legs more smoothly, like she said. But it didn't feel right to glide like jewel bearings in the guts of a well-oiled Clock. He liked to sprawl through Space, landing hard on the edges of his feet. His mother glared down, her nose crinkling like he was a piece of spoiled mutton. Then the door opened. It was Kneebone. Startled. Then angry. "What's this?" He wav'd his hand at the hard-negotiated outfit that Jack had arrived in. Tweed trousers and rough muslin smish++ that had belonged to his brother, Thomas, long Gone now on his Indenture to the colonies and probably Dead of Cold. Or Over- work. Or incorrigible Tendencies. "She's a bargain, sir, and you won't have to keep her in any skirts." Kneebone's eyes widened, narrowed. His upper teeth munch'd at his bottom lip. Then he gestured to Jack with a long-boned hand full of splinters and slits of dried Blood. "Does she work a handsaw and an awl?" Nodding. "Strangely adept with Tools." "And her name?" --Jack's brain turned off in that way he'd perfected when he felt all the muscles of his Body clench up. Which was often. He knew his mother said something in response--because he saw her Mouth move. Kneebone took a piece of Balsam from his pocket. Chewed it. Talked and gesticulat'd angrily. Camphor puffed from  his  mouth with each word. Jack unheard she --unheard it into the swarm of    the rest of the sounds Kneebone was making-- She's ugly, isn't she-- Quite-- But a bargain's a bargain-- Still, what am I meant t' do with this.     Jack imagin'd dropping into the Thames on a summer day, the heavy press of Water 'round his Ears muffling the she s and the she s and ++ Shirt the what am I meant t' do with this. He peered 'round Kneebone's scrawny limbs--now parked on his hips in a belligerent-chicken posture--into the entry room. It was stuffed with woodworking. The Odor of raw timber and oils hung just inside the threshold. The scent calm'd him. Sounds began to come back as through a muffling Fog. "She's dexterous--very," he heard his mother saying and nod- ding, her voice bouncing. "Always gettin' into things at home. There isn't a Doodad that she hasn't undone and redone much the better for 't."*     Looking up at his mother as she turned to leave, Jack felt his usual flicker of unaccountable sympathy. Maybe even Compas- * Not to get ahead of myself, but if authentic, this memoir could compete with Her- culine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite (English translation, with an introduction by Michel Foucault, 1980) for pride of place on quite a few syllabi. For those unfamiliar with Herculine Barbin (1838-1868), let me say this. From approximately 1985 to 1995, you could not take a gay and lesbian literature, theory, anthropology or history class without being assigned this book. How many times did I feign excited queer identification with Herculine, thinking, at least (and about this I was not wrong) that it might get me laid by some of the (what were at that time called) "bicurious" members of the class. Meanwhile, I found the book repulsive and terrifying. Herculine's desperation and isolation. The fact that time was kept by Her- culine not through any objective measure--workday, seasons, school year--but rather through female encounters. When women could be held in Herculine's line of sight; when they were inaccessible. The narrative would frequently drop off until a woman reappeared. What happened to Herculine in these interstices? It seemed, in fact, that nothing, absolutely nothing, occurred in the absence of women; that Herculine awakened from a kind of cryogenic stasis only when summoned by the scent of women, of their-- --well, you know what I mean -- --that particular draft; one to which I myself would soon awaken, and come to love beyond all measure. Hot flint of a lightning strike, plum, basil . . . Lemon, salt, tang of cider from a copper mug . . . Wet forest flowers, dusted with coriander. sion. The scent of whiskey drifted down. His Heart twist'd in its red socket deep in his chest. He knew it then: he  would never see his home again. As bitter as his home was, it was his. Never again to hear the urchins tumbling down Neal Street, the din ricocheting up the close-packed passageway--never again to smell his mother's particular tart scent--the citrusy Anxiety and disappointment that wafted off her Body like a Wind. He was being left here with the merchants and the accountants, the barristers with their busyness and hollow Eyes and looking-away. Even if his mother looked at him with Horror, she looked at him. To these folks he was a scuttling servant--a dog who spake En- glish. Pinched between these two Torments--a home in which he was a thing of Nightterrors, and a servitude in which he was an- other moving Part churning product towards profit--there was no course of action but to try to feel Nothing. His mother bent down and kiss'd Jack's face. She touched his cheek with her hand, and held it there for a moment--she whis- pered something in his ear. Then walked away with nary a backward glance.     At dinner that evening, Lady Kneebone presented Jack with a dress to wear while serving. "Our servant has taken ill, so we're in quite a pinch. You'll have to replace her for now." As the Kneebones stuff'd their bellies with mutton and hot boiled water, Jack stood to the side. He was a Shade haunting the boreal dining room. The yowl of a nasty wet Cough descended through the wide wooden slats of the ceiling--the regular servant making quick progress towards Death. Jack shiver'd in his duds, his skin shrinking from the touch of the organza and lace--girl textiles that seemed only to make the chill worse. He had imagined that the wealthy would keep their houses toasty. This was very much not so. And why didn't the Knee- bones drink cider? Surely they could afford it. Yet they sipp'd spring water bought from a water-cart merchant. Maybe all of them were different than he'd imagined. A dusty, Bland, bitter lot. "P----" Lady Kneebone--not looking up from her uninspired progress through a wad of meat lying just inches from her nose-- called to Jack.* "Make a Gargle of cumin seeds, the mashed root- stock of an iris, and one blistered long pepper." She said this as if Jack had any idea how to make a Gargle. "For protection against the croup," furthered Kneebone, swal- lowing a gulp of hot water and waving Jack back into the kitchen. When Jack brought it out at last--having assembl'd it as best he could from an array of items that must have been purchas'd earlier in the day by the ailing servant and set on the counter in what would prove this poor soul's last labor, save the labors of dying itself--the Kneebones proceeded to throw their heads back and Shriek bubbles, then hack the mucus-broth into their empty mugs.     Standing in the corner of the dining room, watching these two sour Wraiths spatter and drool, Jack tried to recall his mother's depart- ing words. --I love you--despite everything --I smooth'd your dark curls, once-- --Remember that afternoon we walked what seemed forever on the riverbank? To the latter of which Jack would have recalled without flaw the exact weather that day--their most leisurely, closest day together. It had been early November. That time of year when the whole City gloams by late afternoon, and the effluvium of dried leaves crunched underfoot inflicts the inexorability of the Seasons upon the Senses. * How curious: the excision of what appears to be Jack's given name (P----) is original to the text. An autumnal Terror had fluttered in Jack's stomach as horsecarts blasted by, thwacking wet wheels on wet leaves. Wake turbulence swirl'd leaf-fragments in small vortices up and down the darkening Riverbank. His mother had reached down through the dusking Gloom. And held his hand.     Tho' frankly, she may have said--and this is the most likely-- -- You're the greatest Shame of my life.     Better to just imagine Mum dead, he'd shush'd his pounding heart. Lots of urchins have lost their mothers, he reasoned. He saw it daily when he batter'd down the streets with the gang on one of their common ruses, knocking into the apothecary carts, spilling Oils and Emollients on the cobblestones "on accident" in order to de- scend upon the blanched almonds, mint leaves, and barley seeds like a gabbling Flock of pigeons, scraping them up to sell at a cut rate to the next cart 'round the corner. None of them seemed to have any parents at all. He'd be just like them, now, he supposed.     Jack consum'd the Kneebones' scraps while he tidied the kitchen. Then Kneebone fetched him and walked him upstairs to his sleep- ing quarters. A filthy dark garret in the upper reaches of the spindly townhouse. The unmistakable piercing scent of Mice and rot blasted out of the room when Kneebone opened the door. Jack's body ach'd from standing, serving, and cleaning. His neck was prickled with pain. His fingers were stiff and cold. His ex- tremely circumscribed horizon of hope fix'd entirely on the pros- pect of sleep. But as they approached the bed--Kneebone almost projecting him towards it with the negative magnetism of his Nearness--Jack was thrown into wakefulness. An unwelcome, ex- hausted awakeness. He heard something jangling, and peered be- hind him. Kneebone held a heavy Lock and Chain in his hand. "Receiv'd this from a Swedish importer." Kneebone cough'd. "A gift for an especially profitable exchange--a Polhem Lock," he con- tinued, with what appeared an Erotick excitement concerning Lock mechanicks. He caressed the curve of iron, his gray skin sparking to a pinkish gray. "This Lock," he said, fixing Jack in his weak, watery glare, "is unpickable." Jack lay down. He did so without instruction because it was impossible to keep his Body from trembling and crumpling to the bed. Kneebone reached into his torso jerkin pocket and produc'd a Key, which he slid into the Lock. Four teeth yawned open, and Kneebone wound the oiled iron Chain around Jack's ankle, then the bedpost, and threaded the Lock's jaw through. He snapped it shut. Every nerve in Jack's body fir'd against his skin-- His jaw tensed and the muscles of his scalp bunched and held themselves, frozen in aching Huddles-- He willed himself not to look at the Lock--to Unfeel it against his skin-- Unfeel its weight on his ankle and foot. "I'm not extraordinarily cruel," Kneebone said, looking down at Jack. "But I've bought you body and Soul for the period of ten years. And I mean to keep you to it." Kneebone backed away with a Perverse and ashamed half- smile, shutting the door and locking it behind him. "Will return at dawn," Kneebone hissed through the boards, and clunk'd down the stairs.     The next morning, Kneebone hurried Jack through the dining area--dim, chill, and curtained shut against the dawn--towards the Workroom, a cluttered chamber that bowed out in a bay win- dow at the far end. Jack took in the items Kneebone had produced for sale. Dressing tables, chests, armoires, windowsills, and a bi- zarre quantity of little stools with cushioned tops. "What's this?" Jack ask'd, reaching down to poke a cushion. "Don't touch anything!" Kneebone shouted as Jack stumbl'd through the mess. "It's all the property of Kneebone, and Kneebone only. Every item in this room is forbidden to you unless it's being actively worked on." Kneebone sat Jack at the workbench and took a place across, their knees knocking under the table. "I'll teach you window-glazing, nail-casting, and the art of screwsmanship," he announc'd. "But mostly I will teach you tuf- fets. Podiums for the small pet Pups of the aristocrats to perch on whilst having their portraitures painted." He pointed at the cushioned stool Jack had pok'd. "That's where the market is best." The air filled with Kneebone's stale, arid Breath. It wasn't rotted like so many other high-living folks'. But it was bitter, like a tree emitting old Resin from its whorled depths. Jack reach'd for a chisel. He didn't need demonstration. Just glancing at the tuffets he felt assured he could make something similar. 'Twasn't difficult. Probably he'd just have to-- And then Kneebone was at his side. With another Polhem Lock in his hand.     All that first day, Jack did his Thames-trick. He had no other choice against the Terror of the chain. He sent himself floating to cool Depths--morph'd his heartbeat into the thrum of deep water. He'd never had to stay under for so long--but his confinement was so relentless, Kneebone's ownership of him so total--not just his Body, but all his Capacities, all his Potentialities, too--that going Deep was his only option. This trick, as it turned out, was help'd immensely by working with the wood. For Jack was an ace craftsman with an uncanny understanding of the natural properties of architecture and mate- rials. The way a sill rests inside the groove of a Wall was some- thing magnetizing and soothing to his Attention. As was how to sculpt around a particularly recalcitrant knot in a hunk of oak. Or the cool skin of iron, or how much pressure a walnut board could take, how much torquing a birch plank would endure. All this had Jack demonstrat'd through the constant Storm of Kneebone's droning--a stinking stream on and on, only occasion- ally about how to craft wood. More largely a cascade of Tangents and opinions about the horrors of poverty--how it "breeds conta- gion like an overzealous sow." It seem'd Kneebone considered him- self an amateur Doctor. He bragg'd that he'd read a great number of medical textbooks. Commoners--belching "sweaty winds" and "stenchy secretions"--were, according to him, prime vectors of Disorder. "I've saved you from a diseased life lived amongst the diseased," Kneebone said, as he toss'd a moldy bun smeared with rancid but-  ter at Jack for his morning meal when it was nigh on noon. "Saved you from that Mob"--he gestured with his head towards the win- dow and the street beyond--"that Mob that threatens the Publick's Health at every turn."     At Nightfall, Kneebone unlocked him from the table and ushered him into the dining room. Lady Kneebone again instructed Jack to prepare and dole out the supper. It seemed the other servant had indeed expir'd. After the pair had stuffed down their repast, Kneebone escorted him upstairs. Bent over him. Latched his ankle to the bedpost--went to the door and stood there-- Why wasn't he leaving? Kneebone was nailing something to the inside of the door. "To study on." He gestured at the tacked-up parchment when he was done. "For learning your letters." Kneebone read aloud, his finger tracing the words as  he stood there like the pedagogical Father Jack had never had and frankly never wanted. His threadlike arms waved in the candle- light.   AN ACT FOR THE PREVENTION OF FUGITIVE LABORERS * A R ogue or Vagrant is defined as: 1)     all Persons wandering abroad and lodging in barns, outhouses, and de- serted and unoccupied buildings, or in carts or wagons, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of themselves; 2)      all Common Players of Interludes, Minstrels, Jugglers; all Persons wand'ring in the Habit or Form of counterfeit Egyptians, or pretending to have skill in Physiognomy, Palm- istry, or like crafty Science, or pretend- ing to tell Fortunes, or using any subtle Craft, or unlawful Games or Plays; 3)      all Persons able in Body, who run away, and leave their Wives or Chil- dren to the Parish, and not having wherewith otherwise to maintain themselves . . . and refuse to work for the usual and common Wages; 4)     and all other idle Persons wand'ring abroad and begging shall be deemed Rogues and Vagabonds and remanded to gaol or returned to their master, with the period of service doubled.     "So you see, when you leave the house, you'll be subject to ar- rest unless you've got a master's note." Kneebone worked his thin lips back and forth. Turned and clicked the door shut. Jack's breath shallow'd as he lay bound to the bed. The one thing his mother would never have done was threaten him with Arrest; she hated the constables. He will'd himself not to think of her, not to wish himself backwards by one day. 'Twas awful there, too--'twas awful there, too. His mind gritted its teeth against thoughts too terrible to think. The miseries of his mother's house- hold had given way to Torments still worse. His ribs ached from unsobbed sobs. They stung his chest like a diseased Pulse, and he fell to sleep in pain, a dog of Shame and Sorrows.+ * Draft of the 1714 Vagrancy Act? + The usage of plural "Sorrows" is unusual. Excerpted from Confessions of the Fox: A Novel by Jordy Rosenberg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.