One of Us Buried

by Johanna Craven

  The reverend walked slowly towards the door, rubbing a chin that disappeared into the mottled red folds of his neck. He looked me up and down, taking in the gash on my forehead, the blooms of blood on my Navy Board skirts. “You’re a government woman.” It was not a question. But I said:

  “Yes, Father.”

  The bridge of his nose creased, then Marsden turned back to Blackwell. “It’s not necessary for me to speak to her, Lieutenant. Please see her back to the factory.”

  *

  Lottie and Hannah were put in solitary confinement for three days. A part of me was glad for the reprieve. I had no desire to try and explain my actions to Lottie. And I felt more than a hint of anger towards her over her attack. I knew Blackwell a target of the rebels, for reasons I didn’t fully understand. And I knew Lottie was loyal to the Irish croppies. But surely that didn’t warrant the whole stool-swinging debacle.

  When she reappeared in the factory at the end of the week, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Shadows of exhaustion underlined her eyes, her hands discoloured with grime and the stale smell of the cells clinging to her skin.

  For a long time, we sat beside each other without speaking. She glanced at the cut and bruising on the side of my face. I wondered if an apology would be forthcoming. But when she finally spoke, what she said was:

  “Are you really sleeping on the street, Nell?”

  I didn’t look at her. “No,” I said finally. I was surprised it had taken her so long to realise. I focused my gaze on my spinning.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her wheel was motionless.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “Tell me you’re not lodging with him.”

  I knew there was no need to reply. I had been expecting an outburst, but her silence was much more brutal.

  “No,” she said finally. “You’ve got to get out of there. Do you understand me?” She looked at me with an intensity in her eyes I had never seen before. “The street is safer. Risking the savages is safer.”

  Anger tightened my chest.

  “Is this about what Maggie said?” she asked. “About having sway with a powerful man?”

  I laughed coldly. “Power?” I repeated. “You think this about power? I was desperate, Lottie. I was sleeping outside the church. A person has to think of survival before they can think of power.”

  She shook her head. “Any man in this place would have taken you in. And yet you went with Blackwell.”

  “You’re mistaken about him,” I said, my voice coming out thin. I wasn’t even sure she had heard me over the rattle of the looms. Her long silence suggested she hadn’t. But then finally, she said:

  “You trust him then? Is that why you… did what you did?”

  I gritted my teeth. Why I did what I did? Had she not even the courage to say it aloud?

  Why you stopped me from attacking him…

  “Nell?” she pushed. “Do you trust him?”

  I did trust him, I realised. And perhaps that made me a fool. But curling up on his floor made me feel fleetingly safe. That was not something I was willing to give up.

  “He’s giving me food and a fire in exchange for sweeping his floors,” I said. “Tell me there’s another man in the colony who would do that.”

  Lottie laughed coldly. “Sweeping floors. Is that really what you think he wants you for?”

  I didn’t answer. I wanted so desperately to believe in Blackwell’s goodness. Needed to believe in it. I would not have Lottie and her anti-English sentiments ruin it for me.

  She was wrong. She had to be. I had been sleeping on Blackwell’s floor for more than three months, and not once had he even so much as brushed against me in the night.

  “You’re lucky I got in your way,” I said sharply. “You could well have been facing the hangman if you’d struck an officer instead of a factory lass.”

  “Aye, well, it were grand of you to sacrifice yourself for me.”

  “Your attack was unwarranted,” I said, not looking at her. I’d planned not to raise the issue. I knew we had all been rattled after Maggie’s death. None of us had been thinking straight. But her comments had sparked something inside me.

  Lottie snorted. “Just promise me one thing,” she said bitterly. “When he gets a child on you, you name him as the father. Let the colony see who he is. Don’t go pinning it on Marsden like the other women do.”

  We turned back to the spinning wheels. I found myself pedalling faster, letting the wool fly through my fingers. The wheel whirred and hummed.

  “It’s because of Castle Hill,” I said. “That’s why you despise him so.”

  Something passed over Lottie’s eyes. “What do you know of Castle Hill?” She sounded angry I had spoken of it.

  “Nothing,” I admitted. “What happened? What did Blackwell do?”

  “Why should I tell you? I warned you away from him once and I now I find out you’re sleeping beside him in the night. I’m sure whatever I tell you you’ll manage to see it with the eyes of an Englishwoman. You’ll find a way to make him the hero.”

  “That’s not true,” I snapped. “I just want to know the truth.”

  Lottie snorted. “You want to know? Ask Lieutenant Blackwell.”

  *

  Maggie was buried the next day while we were at the spinning wheels. I knew it was a deliberate attempt by Marsden and the Rum Corps to keep the factory lasses away.

  An investigation into the murder had begun. Our information was hazy – mostly comprised of gossip from the men at the river – but in the factory that morning there was word Patrick Owen had been taken to the magistrate for questioning. Committed to prison to await trial.

  I felt a faint flicker of optimism. Three months of Marsden’s weekly sermons had shown me his hatred of the Irish. And if that hatred was what it took to send Owen to the hangman, then so be it. There was no doubt in my mind he had been the one to kill Maggie.

  When work at the factory finished that night, we went to her grave; a meagre pile of earth at the back of the churchyard, with a crooked wooden cross shoved at the head. There was not even any mention of her name.

  I tried not to imagine what her burial had been like. With all the women away at the factory there would have been few – if any – people to mourn her. I couldn’t bear the thought of her being lowered into the earth with no one but the grave diggers to attend her.

  Lottie and I stood at each other’s side, not speaking, settled into an unspoken truce. One of the other women murmured a prayer.

  As we were making our way out of the churchyard, several of the men approached. I wondered distantly why they had come. Were they here to pay their respects to Maggie? Far more likely, they’d come to persuade us to the river and talk some fertile young girls into becoming their wives.

  In the half-light I could make out the tall figure of Dan Brady and several of the other rebels. They looked incomplete without Patrick Owen among them. Sheep without a leader. How many of those loyal croppies knew the man they followed was a killer? Did they, like Lottie, feel the need to push aside the truth?

  Brady laid a stone beside Maggie’s cross. “Patrick Owen sends his regards.”

  Anger bubbled inside me. “How dare you speak of him here.”

  Brady took a step towards me, eyes flashing. “You mean to send him to the hangman, Nellie?”

  I turned away.

  He grabbed my arm, yanking me back to face him. “Hey. We all heard how you got carted off to Marsden. What d’you say to him? Were you the one who led him to Owen?”

  “I didn’t say a thing,” I hissed. “Marsden wouldn’t even let me speak.”

  “And what about Blackwell? You open your mouth to him?” He snorted. “Word is you been opening your mouth to him a lot.”

  My cheeks blazed. “I didn’t say a word to anyone,” I snapped.

  I could feel Lottie’s eyes burning into the back of me.

  “This true, Nell?” she asked. “You were taken to speak with th
e magistrate?”

  “Yes,” I said bitterly. “And it’s also true that he wouldn’t even let me speak. I had nothing to do with them going after Owen.”

  “Leave her alone, Dan,” said Lottie. “She says she didn’t speak to Marsden, then she didn’t speak to Marsden. Patrick’ll be back with us before you know it.”

  “You think Owen innocent?” I asked her.

  She looked at me squarely. “What proof is there he’s guilty?”

  “Maggie was lodging with him,” I said, aware it was an argument I was beginning to overuse. “And her arms were bruised. Just like her neck was.”

  And Dan Brady was up in my face, his nose inches from mine. “Watch yourself, Nellie,” he said. “You hear me? No one wants to hear you mouthing off about what you think happened.”

  Lottie shoved him backwards. “I told you to leave her be.”

  I looked back at Brady, determined not to let him see how much he had rattled me. “What does it matter what I think?”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It don’t matter.” He turned back to the other men. And then they were off down the main street, striding towards the jail.

  I hurried back to Blackwell’s hut, desperate for an escape. Through the cloth window, I could hear voices, footsteps, shouting in the street. Angry men, yelling in Irish.

  With Blackwell on duty, the hut felt too quiet. I sat at the table, cutting up vegetables for soup while the clamour in the street grew louder. The chalky smell of a bonfire drifted beneath the door. I did my best to block out the noise. I needed that hut to feel safe. I realised I was craving Blackwell’s company.

  My stomach was groaning by the time he returned. I guessed it close to midnight. I spooned the soup into bowls and sat them on the table.

  He looked surprised to see me awake. But not angry.

  “I attended Maggie Abbott’s burial,” he told me as he took off his coat and hung it on the nail beside the door.

  “You did?” I felt a sudden swell of gratitude. “Tell me about it.”

  He sat at the table and stirred his soup. “It was simple. Respectful. Reverend Marsden prayed over the coffin.”

  “Who else was there?” I dared to ask.

  “Several of the officers. Parker and his wife from the tavern. A few others.”

  I was glad of it. “Thank you for attending.”

  He nodded. Somewhere in the distance, I heard glass shatter. Blackwell’s eyes darted towards the door.

  “Are you to sit on the jury in Owen’s trial?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And do you think him guilty?” I felt it my duty to Maggie and the other factory lasses to prise out as much information as I could. I knew there were few other women in the colony who had the luxury of sitting opposite a solider and holding a civilised conversation.

  Blackwell gave my boldness a ghost of a smile. “I can’t discuss that with you, Eleanor. You know that.”

  “There were bruises on her arms,” I said. “She—”

  “Yes.” Blackwell’s tone darkened a little. “You told me that before. And as I told you, there’s no proof Patrick Owen gave them to her.” I could hear the impatience in his voice. Knew I was pushing the issue.

  I was saved by a knock at the door. Blackwell pulled it open and noise flooded in from the street. Two young soldiers stood outside the hut.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” said one. “Captain Daley has asked for you at the barracks.”

  Blackwell nodded. “Tell him I’m on my way.” He closed the door on them, then grabbed his jacket from the nail. He slid on his gorget and buttoned his coat to his neck. He glanced at his pocket watch.

  “Don’t venture outside tonight,” he told me.

  “The rebels are angry,” I said. “Because Owen has been arrested.”

  He didn’t answer. But I didn’t need the confirmation. I’d seen the anger in the eyes of Dan Brady and the other croppies. Knew they were fighting for justice for their leader. And I knew that in their eyes, Patrick Owen could do no wrong.

  The hut felt cold and empty after Blackwell had left. I threw another log on the fire and scraped the last of our supper into the trough, setting the unwashed bowls on the edge of the table. I’d wait until morning to fetch water from the river.

  I blew out the lamp and curled up on my sleeping pallet. The cut on my head was drumming.

  I thought of the crude cross at the head of Maggie’s grave. Thought of her sashaying about the riverbank on Patrick Owen’s arm. Lottie was right of course; I had no proof it was Owen. But there was a certainty within me that he had wrung Maggie’s throat. And I ached for him to be punished.

  The person I had been in London would never have let herself get drawn into such matters. Would never have prodded a soldier for answers or churned through evidence in my mind. I would have stepped back, hidden my eyes, told myself the world was as it should be. After all, the person I was in London had no reason to fight. I had everything I needed. I knew, of course, of the inequality in the world, but saw it as an unavoidable part of life. Back in London, the injustices of the world had largely fallen in my favour.

  My father, in his own starched and stilted way, had loved me. I’d never doubted that. My mother had died in her childbed, and my father’s way through the loss was to lavish me with care and attention. I grew up with an endless parade of nurses and governesses, music teachers and tutors. A good head for arithmetic and a convincing French accent, I suppose Father assumed, would go some way to making up for my gaudy appearance.

  I knew I was no great beauty, but I was confident in my intelligence. Father made sure I knew it a good substitute. He brought in master after master to train me in subjects far beyond the scope of most young women of my class. And each night, as we sat opposite each other at the supper table, he would quiz me on the things I had learned that day.

  How might I ask for my supper in Italian, Eleanor? Or; Tell me about Herschel’s new planet…

  As a child, my life had been laid out for me; dutiful daughter and conscientious student, then I was to become a wife and mother. I’d never imagined I could be taken in any other direction. For all my studies of the skies and foreign phrases, my world was narrow. Though I could point to any city on a map, I had no thought of how life might be in any place but London. When, as a nine-year-old child, I heard of our ships landing in Botany Bay, the place seemed as distant as a dream. Never in the stretches of my imagination could I have perceived ever walking these shores. Especially not as a prisoner.

  Jonathan Marling was an accounting client of my father’s; an ambitious young man who shared ownership of a jeweller’s on Theobolds Road. He’d come to our door one day with a valise full of papers, and while I waited for my father to return home, I kept him entertained with mindless small talk and a pot of Indian tea. At the sight of us laughing together in the parlour, my father’s face lit up, and he set about arranging our betrothal with far too much enthusiasm.

  A week later, Jonathan was back at the door to ask for my hand, no doubt buoyed by the sizeable dowry Father had dropped at his feet.

  I’d held out no hope of marrying for love, of course, but accepting Jonathan’s proposal left a hollowness inside me. I found reason after reason to delay my wedding; the need to be married in spring, our priest’s runny nose, the unavailability of sky-blue satin for my bridal gown. I had nothing against my husband-to-be. I was just not ready to become a wife.

  When Father fell ill with smallpox, I was still finding excuses not to marry.

  But Jonathan was there beside me while my father’s body was lowered into the earth. And he was there to accompany me home from the service, to manage Father’s affairs on my behalf, to hold me when the grief broke inside me.

  With Father gone, I felt the emptiness stretching out around me. As his only child, he had left me a good inheritance, but the thought of being alone in the world was terrifying. I felt utterly incapable of managing my own life. And so three week
s after I had walked out of St James’s behind my father’s coffin, I was walking back down the aisle as Jonathan’s wife.

  I became the lady of a whitewashed townhouse in Clerkenwell, with a fortepiano in the parlour and a small garden in front.

  My father would be proud of me, I told myself, as I managed our small staff and walked on Jonathan’s arm to a parade of garden parties and banquets. Would have been proud of the well-respected young lady I had become.

  But I knew he would not have pushed so hard for our marriage if he’d known I’d be a widow by the age of twenty-six. And he certainly would not have done so if he’d known that marrying Jonathan Marling would lead me onto a prison ship.

  I lay wide awake for what felt like hours, listening as the yelling in the street continued. I could see the flare of the bonfire through the cloth window. Did the rebels plan to break Owen out of prison? Or was this chaos their way of announcing to the Rum Corps that they would not be kept down?

  I got out of bed and lit the lamp, knowing there was little point trying to sleep. I went to the shelf and looked over the pile of books. Blackwell’s collection was an eclectic one; a Bible interspersed with the novels of Goldsmith and Fielding, and an enormous brick on construction techniques that looked unbearably dull. I opened the novel at the top of the pile but it did little to hold my attention.

  My gaze drifted to Blackwell’s empty sleeping pallet, to the wooden storage chest beside it. I felt a sudden, desperate need to look inside. To learn just a little about this man I lay beside in the night. This man I had chosen to trust.

  I picked up the lamp, my bare feet sighing against the dirt floor. I tiptoed towards the chest in which Blackwell kept a small piece of himself.

  Guilt tugged inside me, but my curiosity won out.

  I opened the lid and held up the lamp. The chest was filled with clothing; neatly folded shirts, trousers, a scarf and gloves. Beneath them, several more books and a large metal crucifix.

  Tucked down the side, fallen between the books, was large oval locket. I clicked it open, holding it up to the lamp. A young woman peered back at me, pale hair falling in ringlets around a heart-shaped face. She had a delicate beauty, with large doe eyes and a smile at the edge of her lips. I remembered posing for a similar portrait in the year before my father’s death.