Confessions of the Fox

Jack refuses to read from the Bible and give his confessions before his execution. Eventually, Aurie arrives disguised as a priest to free Jack. He slips Jack a file that Jack then uses to once again break out of an impossible-to-escape prison. When Jack makes his way outside, he contemplates throwing himself from the prison walls to his death due to his heartbreak. While contemplating this, he spots the Poor Maria drifting into the river Thames.

Jenny and Bess’s plans work out as they make their way to the Poor Maria to inspect it. Bess is hidden inside Jenny’s boat; she is still liable to be arrested on site for being of south-Asian descent. Jack also makes his way to the ship by diving under the water and breaking into the lower decks of the ship. Jack finds the ship empty, with no commodities or strength gravel calling out to him. Bess also finds nothing of value. The two have a brief reunion before they must evade the police officers on the water and go looking for Jenny, who has gone missing in the ship’s lower holds.

Jack finds a rusted shut door leading to the ship’s gunpowder room. He manages to break it open but severely mangles his leg in the process. Inside, he finds the Lion-Man, who has taken Jenny hostage. The Lion-Man has betrayed Jack and Bess to Wild’s crew in exchange for his freedom. The Lion-Man quotes Locke to Jenny and Jack to flaunt his victory. Wild and his crew arrive shortly after, detaining Bess, Jack, and Jenny. Wild leads them to an inner chamber beyond the gunpowder room to reveal his master plan. This room contains all the tools and apparatuses to dissect and extract organs from human corpses. Wild intends to travel the seas purchasing criminals and convicts from the nation-states of Europe in order to harvest these criminals’ testicles. Wild has found a way to replicate the strength gravel of Okoh’s pirate band using human testicles as fodder. Wild considers it a means of recycling the “refuse” of society and making them useful to the pursuit of profit. Wild intends to hang Jack publicly and harvest his body afterward. Jenny and Bess create a distraction; Bess gives Jack a small metal rod and a sheaf of papers while Jack ignites the gunpowder, hoping to blow up the ship and kill Wild. Both Wild and Jack survive. Wild drags the severely injured Jack to shore and takes him in immediately for hanging.

Voth continues to uncover contributors to the manuscript, like the infamous LGBTQ+ writer Oscar Wilde. Voth believes the manuscript gives insight into the nature of commodities and how humans can sometimes become commodities (such as in the case of Wild purchasing convicts and using them as property to make profit from). Mandeville was notoriously in favor of the use of the corpses of convicted criminals for the profit of medical science; Mandeville’s view was a popular one amongst intellectuals of the 18th century. Voth concludes that a view of commodities as “voiceless” inanimate objects ignores how marginalized peoples’ bodies are often treated as commodities for the profit of the state and the medical industry.

Chapter 11 is a broadside declaring the capture of Jack and the aftermath of the ship’s explosion. Only Wild, Jack, and Bess made it out alive; every other person, including Jenny, died in the explosion. The death of the Lion-Man is treated as a grave offense on Jack’s part due to popular belief that the Lion-Man is an exotic, inhuman creature.

Chapter 12 returns to the scene of Jack’s hanging, where the narrative began in Chapter 1. The chapter is broken into eight subsections. One third of London’s population gathers for Jack’s execution and follows the execution train to Tyburn. The crowd is barely containable and almost spills over into a revolt against Jack’s sentencing. Many in the crowd wear the signature greens of the Levellers, a resistance movement from the 17th century that called for equity, religious tolerance, and democracy. When Jack is hanged, the crowd rushes the stage and saves his body from the state; the crowd fears that their folk hero will be taken from them in the name of medical science.

Jack is paraded through town and his body is treated to drinks all day. The people bury him at St. Martin-in-the-Fields at night. Aurie digs up Jack after the crowd disperses and carries him to a surgeon’s office. The two had previously decided that if Jack were hanged, Aurie would bring his body to a surgeon in an attempt to save him from death. Aurie and his boyfriend Tommy leave Jack with the surgeon and return several hours later to find Jack alive and well. Jack had swallowed the metal rod and papers Bess gave him in order to stop the rope from snapping his neck and obstructing his windpipe. Wild tries to dig up Jack’s body and instead finds an empty grave.

Jack and Aurie hide out in a barn on the outskirts of town. As a legally dead man, Jack can no longer show his face in London. Aurie helps Jack through physical therapy to heal his legs, which were mangled in the explosion. While the two hide in the barns, they write down the original copy of Jack’s confessions. Jack returns from his exercises one day to find Bess waiting for him. She reveals that the papers she gave Jack were a precise recipe for making strength gravel from pig urine, just as Okoh’s people made it. The two decide to leave London and return to Bess’s fens. They plan to muster up the remnants of the Fen-Tigers and defend the fens from the encroaching surveyors while they recreate the strength gravel for Jack. The two disappear “into a flying Cloud,” just as Okoh did previously (310).