by Meg Keneally
When the noise died down, Sam stepped forward. ‘I die an enemy to all tyrants!’ he yelled, his voice a little shaky.
The crowd roared again, mingling shouts of outrage with those of elation. Did people actually believe they were about to watch three men be killed and decapitated – or did they feel, somehow, that they were watching a play?
The executioner was approaching, black hoods in his hand.
‘Sam won’t see me,’ Sarah said to Coombes. This, suddenly, felt like the most important thing in the world, blotting out any caution she might have felt at being too visible herself. ‘But he has to see me – he has to know that I’m alive! And that I’m with him at the end.’
‘Do not draw attention to yourself,’ said Coombes urgently.
‘He won’t be in a position to pay attention for much longer – please!’
The first mate sighed and shook his head, then knelt to grab her around the waist so she could sit on his shoulder. He stood up with a groan of complaint. As she looked around, she saw others borne aloft, children and small women, avidly staring at the gallows.
The crowd grew very quiet as the executioner ap-proached. Sarah knew that if she called out to Sam, she might soon find herself standing before a noose. But she had to do something, anything, to draw his attention. She realised there was one phrase she could use; it might be uttered in either sympathy or condemnation. She took off her cap, letting her hair spill down her back. After drawing in a deep breath, she paused, then yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘May God have mercy on your souls!’
The condemned men turned in unison, as did the executioner and some of the nearby officials. She fancied there was surprise on Briardown’s face, and a slight grin on Tully’s. When Sam saw her, his eyes widened, and he let out a low moan of hopelessness. In a gesture she hoped most would miss, she swiftly held her hand to her heart and then out to him.
The executioner began to lower the hood over Sam’s face, and he kept his eyes on her until the moment the fabric descended. Then Briardown’s long nose disappeared beneath the cloth. The last words from Tully’s mouth were, ‘Finish us tidily!’
The executioner went from one man to the next, draping the nooses over their shoulders. He moved to the lever that would make the platform drop from under their feet. On a nod from the governor of the prison, and amid a silence Sarah had not thought so many people capable of, he pulled it.
The ropes snapped taut as the men dropped. Sarah braced herself, knowing that hanging was an uncertain fate. Briardown jerked, his legs flailing, his body moving from side to side as a dark stain spread on his trousers, before he became still. Sam and Tully were luckier: they jerked briefly, then went limp.
Amid loud cheers from the crowd, Sarah howled and began to sob. Coombes dipped his shoulder, and she slid to the ground, sinking onto her hands and knees. He helped her to her feet and held her, making the kind of shushing noises she had only ever heard from her mother’s lips.
When she looked back to the scaffold, the executioner was behind Briardown’s body, cutting the rope; when the body fell, he and an assistant dragged it out in front of the scaffold, then he roughly pulled off the hood. Briardown’s neck was placed on the block. A surgeon began to cut through the muscle and tendon and bones. Sarah didn’t want to witness this, but she could not avoid the sight of the executioner holding up Briardown’s head, blood still dripping from the stump of his neck, one eye a little more open than the other, his tongue swollen and slightly protruding from his mouth.
There were cheers at this as well, but they were somewhat less enthusiastic. Perhaps more of them finally understand, thought Sarah. Perhaps they know, now, that this is no play. Perhaps they are ashamed of coming here for entertainment. If they are, they deserve to be.
She bent over and retched, ejecting a small dribble of bile. Nearby, she heard the sound of others doing the same.
‘You don’t need to see that happen to your brother,’ said Coombes. ‘Come on, now.’
She certainly did not want to. But wouldn’t it be cowardice to leave before the lid of his coffin was nailed shut? ‘I should stay,’ she said, wiping her mouth.
Coombes glanced at the scaffold and frowned. ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Look.’
One of the officials at the edge of the gallows was talking to a man in a long black coat – a Bow Street Runner? – and pointing towards Coombes and Sarah.
‘Ready?’ asked Coombes. She nodded. He grasped her hand and dragged her through the crowd. When they got clear of the main press of people, they ran all the way to the docks.
*
They found the Serpent at the centre of frantic activity. Baggage was being loaded, while passengers, in fine dress and plain, were walking up the gang-board.
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ Sarah said to Coombes as they boarded. ‘I can’t leave England, Mr Coombes, I just can’t. I owe it to him, to all of them, to find our fellow radicals. To try again.’
‘There will be time for all that,’ said Coombes. ‘But wait a while until we talk to the captain. Don’t go to your cabin – hide yourself in the hold. If that was a Runner we saw, he may well have followed us here.’
She did as he said, squeezing herself between two wooden crates. She could hear feet running above, backwards and forwards, no doubt those of crew loading last-minute provisions and seeing to passengers – the Serpent was to sail that night, and it was already early afternoon. Occasionally she heard sailors shout to each other, but none were alarmed. She was surprised not to hear the captain’s low bellow, as surely he would have returned to the ship by now.
Then she heard him giving a command that she couldn’t quite understand. She understood what was happening well enough, though, when the ship lurched and swayed. The wooden crates rocked towards her, and she had to hold them apart, her arms straining, to keep them from crushing her. When the ship steadied, she crawled out from between them, went over to the ladder and pushed at the hatch. It was locked.
She pounded on it, yelling. No one came.
She went back to the shelter of the crates, put her head on her knees, and sobbed.
Another half-hour or so dragged by before Watkins and Coombes stared down into the dimness of the hold.
‘I wanted to stay in London!’ she screamed at them. Her throat felt raw, and her eyes ached and itched. ‘Mr Coombes, I told you, I have to do something! Please take me back – you will never hear from me again, I promise you.’
‘I understand it has been an upsetting day for you,’ Watkins said, ‘so I’ll forgive the insolence. But I cannot take you back.’
‘Why? You are the captain, surely you have some authority here!’
Watkins handed her a page of newsprint.
We are informed that a woman is being looked for in connection with the terrible plot to murder members of the Cabinet. It is believed the woman is Sarah McCaffrey, sister of conspirator Samuel McCaffrey who is to be executed today at Newgate. No further particulars have been provided. It is understood the lady in question has been sought for some time, however the government now wishes for any individual who may be of assistance to come forward.
‘Still,’ she said after a moment, ‘they do not know I am on this ship.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t know, then,’ said Watkins. ‘I will wager you that they suspect it now. Mr Coombes tells me you attracted some attention at the execution. Not many boys call out in a woman’s voice.’
‘I am willing to take the risk!’ she said. ‘It is not up to you to decide.’
‘That is all very well,’ said Watkins. ‘And are you willing to risk your friend here?’ He inclined his head towards Coombes. ‘I assure you, the Runners will be at the docks by now. If they had found you on board, not only would you have followed your brother, but Coombes and I might also have taken the same route into the afterlife. If they were certain we were harbouring you – and they are not, or they would already have been here – we may well find a welcoming party
when we reach our destination.’
‘I will simply disembark in Portsmouth, then.’
‘You cannot,’ said the captain, ‘as we’re not stopping there.’
‘So where are we to stop? I can find a route back to London from there.’
‘You can try to find your way back. From Cape Town.’
She looked at Coombes, who was staring at the ground. Although she felt remorse over having put him in danger, an odd mixture of grief and petulance was rising in her, threatening to sweep everyone away.
Glancing between the two men, she said, ‘I do believe I require some time on deck, with your permission, captain. The air in here is quite stifling.’
As soon as Watkins nodded, she pounded up the steps and hurried to the rail of the ship. Watching London recede into the distance, she hoped none of the crew came close enough to see that she was quietly replenishing the ocean, drop by drop.
CHAPTER 12
Cape Town, July 1820
These docks, like others she had seen, had streets choked with people, clanking metal and creaking wood, and spires in the distance from which bells rang out every hour. The wooden piers and platforms were all gummed up with shouting men, backs bent under crates or barrels or bolts of cloth, alongside women weeping in the arms of soldiers, seamen or emigrants about to depart. Other women who had provided a less chaste farewell were scanning the crowd for their next customers: disgorged sailors heading for taverns.
But unlike the English docks, these ones nudged the flank of a large, flat mountain, the tallest object Sarah had ever seen. In the few days she had been here, she had spent hours gazing at its cloudy peak.
Sarah still clung to her hope of return, of revenge, but the vision was threatening to soften and fade away. Alone in her cabin, she would call forth images of Sam hanging limp on the end of a rope. She would trace a line across her chest where the Hussar’s blade had slashed her father’s. She would embed her nails into her bare thigh, digging for proof that she still possessed the ability to feel.
She would possibly have ample proof, soon enough – that was partly why she had sent James McDonald ashore. She was now watching his broad back as he tried to thread and angle his way through the dockside crowd.
‘Lucky, aren’t you, to have such a handsome errand boy.’ The words came with a gentle nudge in the ribs, before freckled forearms settled on the rail next to Sarah’s. Maisie Cavanagh craned her neck, her eyes on the tall young man as he strode through the chaos.
Sarah closed her eyes at the words. James was a little older than Henry. On his return to the ship, he would likely make much of his bravery in battling the crowds, while Sarah nodded and thought of a lad who had never drawn attention to his natural courage.
She was struggling to resist the urge to run ashore herself. She still had the boys’ clothes in which she had watched her brother die; they were wrapped in a bundle under her pillow. Apart from the ivory token, imprisoned in Watkins’s seachest in his cabin, they were all she had of Sam, as the little leaden sailor was all she had left of Henry, although she did not know whether it was a clever distraction or a token of affection. They tethered her to England and the accounts to be settled there.
She had considered putting them on. She could smear some of the ship’s plentiful grime on her face, keep her head down, shoulder her way through the dockside crowd. Find a ship that would carry her in its belly as it slid back across the seas the Serpent had just navigated. It was a tempting course of action. Futile, though. The little disc was the only currency she had. She would have to stow away or disguise herself as a cabin boy for the entire journey, and arrive destitute in a friendless city.
This course of action was unlikely to succeed, but at times it seemed that any action would be better than standing at the rail day after day. She could feel impatience stretching within her, along with a panicked urgency. Today she had realised she could at least seek out some information with help from James.
She took a breath and smiled at Maisie. ‘Don’t let James hear you call him handsome,’ she said, ‘or we’ll have to submit to another lecture on what’s wrong with the old world and how he will make it right in the new one.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. I’d just watch those lips moving – wouldn’t listen to a word, of course.’ Maisie was a great admirer of the male form, although she never let her enthusiasm off its leash in mixed company. She was being exported as governess to a family of seven rambunctious children, and she was careful to present the aspect of an austere, decorous woman.
‘I’m sure he’d be happy to have such an attentive audience,’ said Sarah. ‘You had best truss him up before the girls in Sydney get their chance.’
‘It’s a chance I’ll never have, as you well know. His eyes wander, certainly, but not in my direction.’ There was no malice or jealousy in Maisie’s expression. She had a broad, open face, anchored by a little snub of a nose. Her skin was the smoothest Sarah could remember seeing. The girl rarely frowned, and Sarah had never heard her utter a harsh word towards a sailor who clumsily bumped her on the deck, or another of the passengers who trod on her foot when the ship lurched. Such events caused other women – particularly the older ones – to draw themselves up and reprimand the miscreants; Maisie simply smiled and walked on.
‘James’s eyes can wander right off again,’ Sarah said, earning a snort and another sharp nudge from Maisie’s elbow.
It was Maisie, actually, whom Sarah had to thank for the clothes she was wearing. Some quiet enquiries by the captain among the officers’ wives and the few unaccompanied female passengers had revealed only one woman willing to sell a dress to the young lady whose luggage had mysteriously fallen overboard.
Sarah had played with other girls as a child and been friendly enough with them as she grew. But since she and Sam had moved to London, she had barely seen a girl or a woman. Well, there had been fellow servants, pinch-faced and silent; the bowels of a great house were not an ideal place for jovial conversation and the forming of friendships.
In Maisie’s company, some of the tightness that banded Sarah’s chest had begun to ease. The frivolity of the girl’s conversation – the store she set by such things as pleasing manners in a man and soft fabric in a shawl – would have clenched Sarah’s teeth, had it not been cut with a sly wit. Maisie allowed Sarah to sink into a world where such inconveniences as a missing button or a bout of seasickness were the worst that could befall a person.
But would Maisie have been as willing to lend her clothes had she known the truth? Sarah had told her friend what she told everyone who enquired: she was seeking work in Sydney where she had heard domestics who lacked a convict stain were prized.
The ship was not so large that Sarah could avoid some of the more dour and judgemental among the passengers. On this wooden colony with close to two hundred people bumping up against each other, they could even hear each other’s moans of sickness or desire through the cabin bulkheads. She knew well that there were whispers about her: a girl no one had seen boarding, one whose luggage had somehow found its way into the ocean when everyone else’s trunks were stored below. She seemed, too, to be a favourite of the captain, people said; perhaps she was paying for her passage in something other than coin.
‘She speaks in that Northern manner, of course,’ Mrs Simkin had murmured to her husband last Sunday as the two of them walked past Sarah on the deck.
Reverend Simkin usually stalked the decks in sepulchral silence but grew animated each Sunday when the ship’s bell was rung. Most of the Serpent’s free population would make for the poop deck, safe behind a line of soldiers clutching bayoneted rifles. Below them, in leg irons, the convicts would be brought up to the main deck. Twice a day, while at sea, they were allowed up in groups to breathe the same air as their guards, before being reclaimed by the dimness below. Usually they were allowed to amble around unfettered, but on Sundays, when they were asked to absorb the lessons of a loving God, they were ironed – they couldn’
t be trusted, apparently, not to mutiny when everyone else was distracted by devotion.
The boy who reminded Sarah of the baker’s lad was among those to emerge from the hatch each Sunday. On occasion he looked up to the passengers in their reserved paradise of the poop deck, and Sarah sometimes caught his eye and smiled. He would quickly grin at her, then look down. He was learning, already, that there was safety in not attracting notice.
As the weeks had passed, Reverend Simkin had been called on a number of occasions to intone over a shrouded figure brought up from the cell and slid into the ocean. He would stand at a flag-draped table and exhort the men before him to have a care for their immortal souls, in tones that suggested he wasn’t at all sure they possessed such things. Then the main deck would be left to the free, and Mrs Simkin would promenade on the arm of her husband while shooting spiteful little darts out of the corner of her mouth: ‘The Northerners, they are a bit, well, common. And as for him – nothing would surprise me.’
Sarah assumed the him referred to Captain Watkins, and on this she agreed wholeheartedly with Mrs Simkin. Many on board did, including James. ‘He is irregular,’ the young man would say as he watched Watkins clip the ear of one sailor for leering at a female passenger, while another of his crew lay passed out on a pile of rope. For James McDonald, irregularity was the worst of all crimes.
An Irishman, James called himself, and it was true his voice had something of the lilt, although he worshipped in a Protestant church. He was the ninth son of a merchant from County Antrim. Mr McDonald senior already had more than enough successors to his drapery, so it was as well that James had found a position as factotum to a surgeon seeing to the health of those on board the Serpent. The young man had hopes of obtaining work in Australia; he had heard that land grants were doled out to those looked on favourably by the administration. ‘It is so wonderful to be the only McDonald for once,’ he had said to Sarah. ‘No one in Sydney will ever call me the draper’s youngest.’