“The Rum Corps won’t care,” I said. “But I’m sure Mrs Leaver will.”
I watched a look of horror pass over his round face. What a weakness it was, I thought distantly, for a man to care what his wife thought. He pointed a finger at me. I could see it trembling. “One word to my wife and I’ll kill you.”
I smiled thinly. My time in this place had shown me the difference between men who could kill and men who just talked. Robert Leaver was a man who just talked.
“You’ll not kill me,” I said.
He looked taken aback by my boldness. “What do you want?” he hissed.
I faltered. Let out a short laugh. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”
He clenched his jaw. “I said, what do you want?”
And I saw it then. I had power. For the first time since I had stepped onto these shores, I had the upper hand.
I thought of Lottie, wed to Patrick Owen, carted off to Sydney Town. And I said, “I want my ticket of leave.”
*
I signed my name and the paperwork was handed to me.
‘It is His Excellency the Governor’s pleasure to dispense with the attendance at government work of Eleanor Marling…’
Below it was a detailed account of my appearance, my voyage on the Norfolk, and my trial at the Old Bailey. But it was the last line that had my attention:
‘Permitted to employ herself in any lawful occupation within the district of Parramatta.’
No. I couldn’t be imprisoned here in this settlement. Not while Lottie was in Sydney.
I stared down at the page. Demanding Leaver go to the magistrate on my account had been selfish. I ought to have bargained with him for Amy’s freedom. Not my own. I had done as I had out of a desperate need to help Lottie. But this would not help anyone.
I bought myself a room at the lodging house on Macquarie Street. At the market, I found two poplin dresses for sixpence each. They were threadbare and their prints faded, but with a little rehemming, they both blessedly reached my ankles. I stood in front of the mirror in my room at the lodging house and fastened the hooks to my neck. For the first time in almost two years, I was not dressed the same as every second woman in Parramatta. Nor was I the lady I had been when I had last stood in front of a mirror like this and fastened a lace collar at my throat. The relentless sun had darkened my skin and lightened my hair, almost two years of labour scarring my hands with callouses. But I knew the changes this place had wrought on the inside were far greater. Parramatta had stolen my ignorance, my ability to turn away. Twenty months in New South Wales and I was a woman who walked with a knife in her hand.
I looked down at my papers I had laid across the bed. Though I had little else, I had freedom of sorts. The enormity of that was not lost on me, despite the underhand way it had come about. I felt little guilt at having blackmailed Robert Leaver. Twenty months in New South Wales had also taught me there was little place here for decency.
I combed and pinned my hair, scrubbed my skin clean. And when dark had fallen thick across the street, I went to Lieutenant Blackwell.
I stood outside the hut and knocked, my heart pounding harder than it had the night he had first brought me here.
The door groaned as it opened.
He stooped in the doorway, looking at me without speaking. His eyes glided over the floral print of my skirts, my neatly pinned hair, the hint of lace at my neck. Beneath the callouses and the second-hand dress, I had conjured up a little of my old refinement. Chin lifted, shoulders back; a way I’d not carried myself in many months. Last time Blackwell and I had spoken, I’d been a chaotic mess with a knife in my hand. I needed him to see I was stronger than that. Capable. I needed to him to do as I asked.
I held out my paperwork. I knew one glance at the page would tell him I was here for life. But as he glanced over it, his face gave nothing away.
“You have your freedom,” he said finally, passing the papers back to me. “That’s wonderful.”
I shook my head. “It’s not wonderful. I can’t leave Parramatta. And I need to get to Lottie in Sydney Town.”
Finally, Blackwell took a step back, gesturing for me to step inside the hut.
“I’m sorry, Eleanor,” he said, “this is the way things are. But do things right and perhaps one day it will become a pardon.”
I couldn’t wait for a pardon. Not while Lottie was lying beside Patrick Owen in the night.
I looked up at him. “You could persuade the magistrate on my behalf,” I said. I knew there was little point dancing around the issue.
Blackwell scooped back his hair, exhaling. “This is highly inappropriate.”
“Yes. I know.” I looked him in the eye. And I kept my distance. Perhaps there were ways I could have persuaded him. Gentle fingers down his arm, lips on his neck.
Concubine.
I stayed fixed to the floor, my papers held out in front of me. “Please,” I said. “Lottie is in danger.”
“Danger you plan to walk right into.”
He cared for me; yes, I saw that. And a part of me was grateful. But I didn’t want to be cared for right then. I wanted – needed – that extra gasp of freedom.
“You were the one who arranged for me to work for Leaver,” I said suddenly.
“Yes.”
I swallowed, taken aback by his blunt admission. “Why?”
His eyes shifted. “You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Because when I’m around you, I fear I will be unfaithful to my wife.”
The words fell heavily into the silence. They did not bring me nearly as much satisfaction as I had expected.
“I thought it better for both of us,” he said. “I know working in the factory is difficult.”
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was better for both of us. But that didn’t stop me from feeling as though I’d been discarded.
My hand tightened, crumpling my papers. “Patrick Owen should never have been allowed to walk free,” I said. “We both know that.”
I saw his jaw tense.
“I need to get Lottie away from him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I only knew it was not something I could do from the depths of Parramatta. “Please,” I said. “You know how important this is to me.”
Blackwell rubbed his stubbled chin, exhaling deeply. Finally, he reached for the papers. “Let me speak to the magistrate.”
*
The following day, the factory burned. Flames roared up from the warehouses above the jail, a cloud of smoke drifting across the sun.
We all stood by the river, watching flames pour out the side of the building. The smoke stung my eyes and made my throat burn.
The women from the spinning wheels milled about in the street, staring up the fire. They chattered among themselves, some with children clamped to their hips. The men from the prison below the factory stood lined up in their shackles, guarded by a row of soldiers. Convicts and enlisted men formed a line from the river, passing buckets of water up the chain to be flung onto the blaze.
I sought out Hannah, who was standing among the women. I could feel their eyes on me, taking in my floral skirts, my straw bonnet. I felt myself shrink under their scrutiny. For so many months, I had longed to be more than a miserable factory lass. But now I felt painfully disconnected. Caught between two worlds.
“What’s this about then?” asked Hannah, gesturing to my dress.
I shook my head dismissively. “Had a little spare coin is all.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I’d wrangled a ticket of leave.
I stared up at the factory, imagining the spinning wheels ablaze. “What happened?”
“Started in the kitchen,” she told me. “Some logs come out of the grate and landed on the girls’ blankets.”
Fitting, I thought, that that dreadful place might turn to ash. It deserved little more. But I feared what it would mean for the women and children who spent each night
on its floor.
I edged away from Hannah and the other women, feeling an inexplicable tug of guilt. Guilt that I might escape this place. And guilt that fate had fallen in my favour and led me to Blackwell’s door.
I felt his presence before I saw him. He stood at my side and pressed a piece of paper into my hand.
I unfolded it, heart pounding. My ticket of leave.
And there, at the bottom of the page, was the thing I had longed for:
‘Permitted to employ herself in any lawful occupation within the district of Sydney.’
I looked up at him with gratitude in my eyes. I was going to find Lottie.
And then?
I couldn’t bring myself to think that far ahead. I was terrified of what I might find.
“Thank you,” I murmured. He was standing close; close enough for me to see the dark blue flecks in his eyes. At the back of the crowd we were hidden; Parramatta’s eyes on the burning jail.
“Be careful,” he said huskily. He bent his head and kissed the salty skin on the side of my neck.
Before I could reply, he was gone.
PART THREE
The courtroom is hot and cramped. I stand pressed between the other prisoners, their shoulders hard against mine. I can sense their racing hearts, can smell the sweat on their skin, feel as though I’m drowning in their fear.
Our trials are cursory, and we are given little chance to speak. The magistrate metes out punishments like a dull schoolroom recitation.
Assault of an overseer: to the coal mines in Newcastle.
Theft of government stores: remainder of sentence at Toongabbie.
And then I am brought forward; my name spoken, my charges read out.
I am given the chance to speak, but I know nothing I say will save me. I am a factory lass who has robbed a man of his life. I have taken that final step: murderess. I am to be made an example of; a cautionary tale of a woman who took the wrong path. A warning to the other factory lasses to be quiet, be moral, be obedient. I grip the railing of the dock, praying my legs will hold me when the inevitable verdict comes.
The magistrate’s words are no surprise.
For the murder of Adam Blackwell, you are sentenced to hang by the neck until you are dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With my ticket of leave in my pocket, I climbed back onto the barge. The morning was hot and hazy, eels wrestling beneath the surface of the river. I watched over my shoulder as Parramatta and the charred shell of its factory vanished behind a wall of forest.
I felt focused as we wound along the river, my eyes fixed on the road of coppery water. I had no plans beyond finding Lottie, no thought of what shape my life would take now. But my days as a Parramatta lag were behind me. I had more freedom than I had ever imagined I would have again.
The sun was sinking when the barge bumped against its moorings in Sydney Cove. In my twenty months away in Parramatta, Sydney Town had grown. I saw hints of London in its neatly carved stone and the church spires that interrupted the vastness of the sky. Rows of jetties had sprung up out of the mudflats and the sprawl of huts and cottages had begun to take over the forest. And the people; more people than I’d seen since England. Sailors and soldiers, ladies and lags, filling the streets with chatter, with colour; overwhelming in their sheer number.
How was I to find Lottie among the expanse of this place?
Hastily built taverns teetered on the waterfront, men clustered outside them, roaring with laughter. I dared a glance through the window of one, and saw hordes of sailors at bare wooden tables, some stumbling drunkenly into one other. I kept walking. On the corner of the road weaving inland from the harbour, I found a smaller tavern without the men gathered out the front. A wooden sign squeaked above the door, announcing my arrival at the Whaler’s Arms.
I stepped inside. The bar was small, with dark wooden panelling, barrels and bottles lined up neatly behind the counter. Round tables were dotted about the room.
“Close the door behind you, lass,” called the man behind the bar. “Flies’ll take over the place if you let them.”
The door groaned loudly as I yanked it shut.
“I’m looking for a man named Patrick Owen,” I told the barman. “Do you know him?”
The man was big and bearlike, with a dark beard that reached halfway down his chest. “Never heard of him.”
“Irishman,” I said. “Fair hair, handsome.”
The barman chuckled. “Taken your fancy has he? Sorry lass, afraid I can’t help you.”
As I made my way towards the door, I heard a tangle of Gaelic. I stopped walking. The voices came from a group of older men, crowded around a table in the corner of the bar. I had little doubt that Owen had caused as much of a stir among the Irish in Sydney as he had in Parramatta. I made my way towards the table.
“Patrick Owen,” I said. “Do you know him?”
One of the men blew a long line of smoke in my direction. “Who’s asking?”
I hesitated. “I’m a friend of his wife.”
And a gnarled brown finger was pointing in the direction of the street. “Owns a place out past the cemetery. Not too far from here.”
By the time I stepped out of the inn, the last of the sunlight was draining away. The sea slapped rhythmically against the docks, interspersed with horse hooves and the crunch of cartwheels against stone.
I followed the directions the man had given. Owen’s property was small and simple; a stone cottage at the front of few square paddocks. A lamp flickered at the front of the house, but it scooped out little of the darkness.
I made my way up the narrow path and knocked on the door, heart pounding. Was I scared of Owen, or scared of how Lottie might react when she saw me? Perhaps a little of both. Most of all, I was scared I would be too late.
A young woman in a mobcap opened the door. She looked me up and down. “Yes?”
I faltered. I hadn’t expected Owen to have a housekeeper.
“I’m looking for Lottie.” I swallowed. “For Mrs Owen.”
The girl knotted her apron around her finger. “Mrs Owen ain’t here no more.”
My stomach clenched. “What happened to her?”
“I heard she went to the Rocks.”
I frowned, not understanding. Still no wiser as to whether Lottie was alive or dead.
“The Rocks,” she said again. “Down by the cove.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Why is she there?” I asked.
The girl chewed her lip, avoiding my gaze. Mothwings pattered into the glass of the lantern.
I gave up. It didn’t matter why. “Down by the cove,” I repeated.
She nodded. “But best you don’t go there yourself, miss. It ain’t a good place to be venturing at night.”
The knot in my stomach tightened. “I’ve no choice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I observe that [when they are let out of the barracks on a Sunday, the convicts] run immediately to the part of the town called the Rocks, where every species of debauchery and villainy is practised.”
Major Henry Druitt
Chief Engineer of New South Wales
27th October 1819
The Rocks was a noisy, narrow, London kind of chaos. Mudbrick and sandstone jostled each other for space, houses climbing up rock terraces and threatening to topple into the alleys below. Clothes lines were strung across the streets, hung with linen and stained shirts. Men and women gathered outside houses, laughing, drinking, blowing pipe smoke into the sky. Two children barrelled past me, knocking into my hip.
I thought of the slums of Whitechapel, a place I’d only ever heard stories of. A humid haze hung over the place, and I could smell the stench of human waste, of unwashed bodies, of food gone sour in the sun. Beneath it all, the salty breath of the ocean.
I peered down one of the narrow alleys that snaked off the main thoroughfare. Two women were sitting side by side on the street, babies squirming in their arms. One of the children stared
after me until I reached the end of the lane.
Down another alley, another, another. The streets felt circular and maze-like. Another turn and I was at the sea. I drew in a long breath, filling my lungs with the clean, salty air. I looked out over the dark plain of the ocean, listening to the water clop between the rocks. I could see the faint flicker of a lamp glowing on an island in the bay.
My feet were aching, my body weighted with exhaustion. I knew I ought to find myself a bed. But I couldn’t bear to leave without finding Lottie. Not now I was so close.
I turned and walked back down the alley. And here were men coming towards me; all rolled up shirtsleeves and puffed out chests. Three of them. No, four.
I realised I’d made myself a target. A foolish target who had learned barely a scrap of street sense in her time in Parramatta.
I put my head down and walked faster, but I had lost all sense of my bearings.
“Don’t leave us, darling,” called one of the men, making the others roar with laughter. I suppressed the urge to run, sure it would make them chase me. But as one of the men reached for my arm, I grabbed my skirts in my fist and darted around the corner, deeper into the narrow warrens of the Rocks.
When I felt another hand at my wrist, I swung away wildly.
“Nell,” said the familiar voice. “It is you.”
I stopped running and gulped down my breath.
“Saw some lunatic charging by,” Lottie said, before I could speak. “What in hell are you doing here?”
I threw my arms around her, overcome with relief. “I came looking for you. I…”
She looked at me with questions in her eyes – and yes, I knew there were many questions. A firm hand around my arm, she led me back down the alley I had run through. A narrow doorway led into what looked to be a dimly lit kitchen. The room was crammed with women in ragged clothing; some huddled on the floor, others herding children, a couple bustling around a cooking pot hung over the fire. The heat was stifling.
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