by Meg Keneally
Nell’s head was a little to the side, as though she herself was silently questioning the truth of her own death. Her eyes were slightly open, her cheek bruised. A wet red bloom had spread out from several knife wounds in the centre of her chest, soaking into the flowers on the fabric. Her skirt had been hauled up and now lay underneath her hips. The fabric at the front covered enough to spare her a final indignity, although Sarah doubted that had been the design of the killer. She knelt, pulled Nell’s skirt down and moved her legs together. Tried and failed to close her arms over her chest, as they were already stiffening. Bent down, kissed her forehead. Then stood, and ran.
*
Amelia was asleep in Lizzie’s arms, still clutching the moistened cloth the young woman had given her to suck on, a poor substitute for her mother.
One of the boarding-house guests had agreed to carry an urgent message to Mrs Thistle. When she burst into the kitchen, she went straight to the sideboard and extracted a cut glass decanter, unstopped it, splashed rum into a teacup almost to the brim, and handed it to Sarah, who pushed the cup away. She remembered how the liquid had scoured her throat when Briardown had occasionally offered it around at a meeting.
Mrs Thistle sat down and pushed it back to her. ‘Drink.’ This was clearly an order.
Sarah nodded, lifted the cup as daintily as she could, drank, choked a little, and drank again. ‘She was . . . she had some acquaintances who could be dangerous.’
‘I know what she did, Miss Marin.’ Mrs Thistle sighed, putting her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘You know the constables – they are supposed to treat all murders alike, but this . . . I doubt they will exert themselves.’
Sarah set her cup down so hard that rum splashed onto Mrs Thistle’s sleeve. ‘So what is it to them? An accident? The wages of sin? Because of what she did, she is worth no more than a dockside rat?’
Mrs Thistle squeezed Sarah’s hand almost painfully. ‘I am in a reasonable position to exert influence over those who would once have seen me as expendable. And I will do so on Nell’s behalf.’
Sarah inhaled slowly and rubbed her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
‘I regret her death. And you should also know this – no one can be permitted to do as they please to someone under my protection. This cannot go unpunished. If it does, the next man will feel as though he can encroach, and the next, and they will start nibbling around the edges of me until I am back in rags.’
*
Mrs Thistle’s influence was as broad as she had claimed. That night, the constables descended on the tavern in which they usually drank. Heads were likely knocked and necks stood on, and in the end several men told them they had seen Nell leaving the tavern with Houlihan, the man who had been Mrs Vale’s fence.
Throughout the hearings over the next few weeks, Sarah stood next to Mrs Thistle as Houlihan stood in the dock, wearing his yellowed neckerchief, and claimed he’d been nowhere near the tavern. And as witness after witness – the tavern keeper who relied on the goodwill of the constables, some of whom drank there, and a variety of dock workers, many of whom were employed by Mrs Thistle – said they had seen him at various points that night: unsteadily climbing into his cart, driving it over someone’s dog, picking fights.
Many people dribbled in and out of the courtroom. Some were court officials, others simply members of the pubic seeking entertainment.
When it came time for Sarah to testify, the crowd was swelling out the courtroom doors, standing on their toes and craning to see her. There was still a widespread fascination with this woman who had cheated the ocean.
‘You know what to say,’ Mrs Thistle had told her. ‘Provide the best version of the truth.’
Houlihan spat on the ground when the judge intoned the death sentence. The man who had left Nell with her life leaking onto the ground would be punished, and no one else would die because of him.
Sarah realised that for all of the talk in the Marylebone loft, and the equally fine visions woven by Keenan and Baxendale in The Rocks, Mrs Thistle was the only person she had met who had achieved something beyond words. She had caused a judge to hear of Nell. She had made the superintendent exert himself on Nell’s behalf. She had caused a tiny crack in the thick wall that had always stood between Nell and just treatment. She had forced a tacit acknowledgement, through the sentence of the court, that without Nell the world was diminished.
CHAPTER 30
Mrs Thistle’s carriage was waiting for them outside the courthouse, but she waved the driver away, asking him to return in an hour. She took Sarah’s arm and started walking towards the harbour. ‘I need to smell the sea,’ she said. ‘Just for a minute.’ Her voice sounded strangely thick, and she was staring straight ahead, her lips firmly pressed together.
They walked in silence for a little while. When Mrs Thistle brought them to a stop, they were outside the tavern where Sarah had found Nell’s body. Mrs Thistle nodded down the path they were walking on. ‘Look,’ she said. Sarah followed her gaze to the brown-grey warehouses that lined the harbour, again noticing the sign that read THISTLE.
‘It wasn’t as though I couldn’t afford to pay her,’ Mrs Thistle admitted, ‘and you. In something more than food and board. But people are always hanging off me like leeches, you see, trying to extract more. So I’ve always given as little as possible, to everyone. You are no leech, and neither was Nell. If I had paid her, she might not have . . .’ Molly Thistle inhaled. ‘She died in sight of the name of someone who could have saved her.’
Sarah looked from the warehouse to the woman. Until now she had seen one as an extension of the other; she had not, she realised, believed Mrs Thistle any more capable of regret than the building named after her. ‘You do not like those who take what isn’t theirs, so you should not either,’ she said. ‘Houlihan deserves the full weight of Nell’s death. Do not lighten his burden.’
‘If I’d been a little more generous—’
‘You cannot know what would have happened. Ask for penance for the sins you have committed, not for the ones you haven’t earned a right to.’
‘You are right, of course,’ Mrs Thistle said. ‘I have not sought anything from God for a long time, but my penance will be measured in the coins that flow to others. Including to you, Miss Marin.’ She patted Sarah’s hand before moving off. She clearly expected Sarah to stay in step with her, so Sarah nearly stumbled into her back when she stopped abruptly. ‘I suspect you have sought penance of your own. I hope you will tell me, one day, what for. Perhaps even your real name.’
Sarah did not trust herself to move. Any attempt to deny it would be clumsy and easily seen through.
Mrs Thistle gave her a small smile. ‘I am from Lancashire too. Never met a Marin. I did, though, listen in when my girls were having French lessons. It means “sailor”, yes? Odd that a woman with such a name should be the only one to survive a shipwreck.’ She straightened. ‘I can forgive anything but dishonesty. I assure you, I grant absolution far more easily than a priest. But if sins go unatoned for, I am less yielding than the worst of them.’
*
A few days later, Sarah was invited for afternoon tea at Mrs Thistle’s home. Lizzie was more than capable of running the boarding house for an afternoon, and Mrs Thistle had arranged for another Female Factory convict, Caroline, recently delivered of a baby, to feed Amelia.
Every morning Sarah set out eggs, cheese, bread and marmalade for the wet nurse. Lizzie would hold Caroline’s baby as she quickly ate, while Sarah went to get Amelia from her basket, used less now as Sarah tucked the little girl in with her each night. Caroline would then unlace her shirt and sit with a baby in each arm as they fed.
Sarah tried not to resent Caroline – the girl was doing nothing, after all, but giving Amelia nourishment. But Sarah had trouble forgiving her for not being Nell.
When Sarah arrived for tea at Mrs Thistle’s house, a young woman around her age, but far better fed than the Female Factory girls, opened the door, s
tood aside and beckoned her into an entrance hall, before gesturing her to a brocaded seat. As she sat there, the indoor silence weighed on her, seeming to carry an expectation of an answering quiet, a disapproval of any activity that might lead to the scuff of a shoe on the floor tiles, at least those unprotected by the large ornate rug.
Unable to remain seated for long, she walked quietly around the room. It was darker than it could have been, painted in a rust-red, with a large mirror on one side reflecting the stern colour back to itself. Apart from the couch and a small side table on which a blue-and-white pot sprouted roses, there was only one other object.
The picture was framed in gold-painted wood: a man whose lower face was obscured by a precisely clipped beard. His eyes, glancing off to the side, squinted slightly in irritation, and the remaining hair that adorned the back part of his head was severely swept back. She had seen this kind of portrait before; usually the subject was dressed in a uniform and festooned with medals, or at least in clothes embellished by the painter to seem far richer than they were in reality. This man, though, wore a simple black waistcoat and jacket, a white shirt and a cravat.
‘The number of visitors I catch staring at that picture,’ said a voice from the top of the stairs. Mrs Thistle was descending, her gait slightly uneven and so quick that Sarah feared she might trip. The woman clearly knew every board, though, and was beside her within a few moments. ‘He would have loved it here. A creature of the water, was William.’
‘Your late husband.’
‘Yes. He would have loved my warehouse too. The only ones he saw were those we had along the Hawkesbury. A lot better behaved than the harbour, most of the time, but the vessels aren’t as big, can’t carry as much. I need, you see, to be the one with everything, spices and silk and skins. If I don’t have it, they go somewhere else and tend to stay there – most would prefer not to do business with a woman.’ She called over her shoulder, ‘Lilith!’
Sarah had heard similarly open-throated shouts on the dock.
‘Lilith! The tea things!’ Mrs Thistle walked towards the door near the side table, opened it and gestured Sarah through.
At the centre of the room a small table was surrounded by armchairs, all facing a window looking out to the front gardens. Mrs Thistle gestured Sarah to a chair and slumped into the one opposite. ‘You and I, you know, we are the only ones who are mourning Nell.’
Sarah hadn’t known what to expect from Mrs Thistle in her own home. Naturally she’d expected Nell to be mentioned, but she had assumed it would be more in the way of nice words: Nell was a grand girl, a good friend, a good worker. Not this genuine grief.
‘Amelia will, in time,’ Sarah said.
‘Probably not. She won’t remember her mother, not really. Would have been off to the orphan school with her, but I have arranged for her to be placed with a family I know, out in Windsor. They have seven children, they’ll barely notice one more, and the older ones look after the younger anyway. She will be safe and fed.’
It took Sarah a moment to understand what Mrs Thistle was saying. She had assumed Amelia would stay with her, that she would be the one responsible for guiding this fragment of her friend through the colony’s dangers. ‘She – she cannot be one among many. I won’t allow it!’
Mrs Thistle arched an eyebrow. ‘It is not up to you.’
‘She is happy with me, though. She knows me. She will be so frightened with strangers.’
‘No one is a stranger for long, to a child of that age,’ Mrs Thistle said gently. ‘Amelia will be treated kindly. She will have brothers and sisters and as fair a chance of happiness as anyone. Don’t let your fondness rob her of that.’
Sarah closed her eyes, trying not to cry. ‘She will be told about her mother, though?’
‘Well, that’s really up to the family. The father’s a half-decent pastoralist, sells wool through me. We will consign Nell to our own memories, with great regret. You mustn’t think me unmoved. I just believe we can do better for her than simply wail at her passing.’
Sarah thought of the many times she had cradled and nuzzled Amelia. She had walked around their small room singing and humming, and rocking from one heel to the other. The sweet smell of Amelia’s head would be lost to her, while the baby’s morning chirps might be unappreciated by her new family, her cries unanswered for an instant more than necessary. This was a child whose mother could have put her in an orphanage, as many did. This was a child for whom that mother had risked her body to attain the means to fend off starvation, should it come to that – Sarah still had the money Nell had earned, and would give it to Mrs Thistle to send with the girl. This child, and her mother, deserved remembrance.
‘If we cannot see that her daughter remembers her,’ said Sarah, ‘what can we possibly do?’
‘Try to make sure she’s the last one to die in an alleyway,’ said Mrs Thistle.
CHAPTER 31
‘I need a helper,’ Mrs Thistle told Sarah. ‘Nell’s murderer would not have paid for his crime unless I was able to get to the superintendent. But I’m an old woman. My children are not interested in following me into trade, although they will own everything after I die. I want to make sure there are those who know how things ought to be run.’
Once a week, at least, Mrs Thistle took Sarah to the docks where they watched crates being handed down and barrels being rolled along planks, and Mrs Thistle would yell up to the men who were moving them. If they knew what was good for them, they stopped. If they had dealt with her before, they opened the crate or the barrel straight away, and Mrs Thistle would pull out sawdust-packed china or extract a handful of tea leaves and let them run through her fingers, rubbing them between her forefinger and thumb while smelling them, the same gesture she used to test the bolts of cloth that came off the ships.
By this time, the captain would have appeared at the rails, having heard she was there. She would look up at him. ‘How many crates of this? Four? And you do realise that this finest tea, as it says on this crate, has grass clippings in it?’ Or, ‘It was wine I asked for, not rum. Good Lord, this whole city is awash with rum – I would make no money if I imported it.’
Sarah was unable to spot the grass clippings or any of the other deficiencies over which Mrs Thistle berated the captains. ‘They have to know you’re looking,’ she said once, as they walked away. ‘They have to know it’s not good enough, whatever it is.’
Sarah found herself enjoying the older woman’s company, and she was more interested than she had expected to be in the workings of the business. And if she gained Mrs Thistle’s trust, she might be able to convince the woman to put her in charge of the convicts assigned to the enterprise. She could get Henry assigned to one of the Thistle properties, without revealing his background.
Another part of running things was the collection of rents.
At first Sarah was alarmed when Mrs Thistle invited her for what she called ‘a spot of debt collecting’. When her parents’ piecework had stopped coming, but before they started at the mill, she had hidden behind her ma’s skirts whenever there was a pounding on the door, and she had heard her pa trying to sound strong while he pleaded for more time.
‘I can’t be part of putting a family on the street,’ she said.
Mrs Thistle snorted. ‘Is that what you think of me? Well, I suppose it’s a reasonable assumption given the behaviour of most landlords. Believe me, dear, my properties are not the sort in which those on the verge of penury live. They’re businesses, mostly, and the occasional private residence. I have forgiven more rent than you realise for those who have lost their positions or been recently widowed. But sometimes people are just taking advantage, and those are the ones who deserve a little reminder.’
Sarah had to admit to a creeping affection for the woman: an admiration for what she had built, and an appreciation for her odd mix of kindness and practicality. She certainly did not deserve to be run through, whatever Baxendale said.
*
On
their first day collecting rents, the streets they walked were close to the heart of the town, the houses huddled together as though seeking protection from some of the rougher inhabitants. They were followed by a large, silent man with the strap of a leather satchel across his chest, whom Mrs Thistle had introduced to Sarah as Mr Ash. He walked several feet behind them so that no one who glanced at the two women would guess they had any association with him.
‘They never expect it, you see,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘They know what’s coming, of course – yank open the door, all ready to snarl, and there I am. Well, I’m not a threatening hulk of muscle.’
Mrs Thistle barely came up to Sarah’s shoulder, and her lace cap, faded hair and little half-moon spectacles were the best disguise she could ever have adopted.
‘Of course, the surprise doesn’t work for long,’ Mrs Thistle said. ‘It’s why I always bring a friend.’ She gestured to her with her head back towards Ash.
They had approached a two-storey sandstone building, a rarity even for this part of the settlement. Mrs Thistle knocked, more gently than usual. ‘This could get a little delicate,’ she whispered to Sarah, then seemed surprised when a young man opened the door. His shirt would probably have been considered quite fine had it not been stained in places and undone. His skin had not been troubled by a razor for some time, and the substance on his head was more knot than hair. He did not greet them, simply leaning against the doorframe and staring at them.
Mrs Thistle said, ‘I was looking for—’
‘Not here,’ said the young man, starting to close the door again.
Mrs Thistle gestured Ash over. He strode forward and placed a palm on the door just as the latch was about to snick home. He pushed, and it slowly opened.
‘Where is he, then?’ asked Mrs Thistle.
‘Moved to his house upriver. Says it smells here. You know where to find him – still drives the trap in every day.’