Remember Me

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ Mary retorted, thinking Dolly was jealous. Her sister was far prettier than her, her eyes as blue as the sky above, her complexion clear and pink, and she had a dear little upturned nose. But Mary had a feeling that Dolly often wished she was more daring, and perhaps resented that her life was already mapped out for her.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Dolly replied in a small voice. ‘I’m going to miss you so much. Don’t stay away too long.’

  Mary remembered how she’d hugged her sister then, and said something about how she would make her fortune and send for Dolly to join her. If she had known that was going to be the last time she’d see her, she would have told her how much she loved her. Yet that sunny morning she couldn’t get on the boat fast enough. It didn’t even cross her mind that she might fail in Plymouth.

  What Mary hadn’t anticipated was that hundreds of girls came off the boats in Plymouth every week looking for work, and it was the literate, the prettiest and the ones with good references who got the best positions. All she landed was a job in a seamen’s ale house, washing the pots and scrubbing the floors. Her bed consisted of a few sacks in the cellar.

  It was around Michaelmas when the landlord threw her out. He said she’d stolen some money, but that wasn’t true. All she’d done was refuse to let him have his way with her. Without a reference she couldn’t get another job, and she was too proud to go home to Fowey to hear ‘I told you so’.

  The moment she met Thomas Coogan down by the harbour, she knew that she was on the way to hell in a handcart. Surely no decent young woman would allow a complete stranger to buy her a dinner, let him hold her hand, and not run a mile when he suggested she stayed with him until she found another job? But there was something about his lean, bony face, the sparkle in his blue eyes, and the stories he told her of voyages to France and Spain that captivated her.

  Thomas wasn’t bound by any of the rules Mary had been brought up with. He cared nothing for the King, Church, or indeed any authority. He had a gentlemanly manner and was fastidious about his appearance, and he was more fun to be with than anyone she’d ever met before.

  Maybe it was partly because he seemed to desire her so much, to hold her and kiss her. No man had ever wanted her that way before, they saw her just as a friend. Thomas said she was beautiful, that her grey eyes were like a brewing storm and her lips made to be kissed.

  That first day with him was utterly magical. It rained hard and he took her into a tavern by the harbour and dried her cloak in front of the fire. He introduced her to rum too. She didn’t like the taste, or the way it burned her throat, but she did like the way he leaned forward and licked her lips lightly with the point of his tongue. ‘It tastes like nectar on you,’ he whispered. ‘Drink up, my lovely, it will warm you all over.’

  He made her feel so wanton, her whole body seemed to glow, and it wasn’t just the rum. It was his wit, the feel of his hand in hers, the suggestion that she was on the brink of something dangerous yet wonderful too.

  With hindsight she ought to have suspected there was something amiss when he never attempted to bed her. He kissed her passionately and told her he loved her, but it never went any further than that. At the time Mary had foolishly believed his caution was out of love and respect for her, but it was only later she discovered the truth.

  Thomas Coogan cared for no one but himself. He was a pick-pocket, and when he’d spotted her crying down by the harbour, he knew her well-scrubbed, innocent country girl appearance would make her an ideal accomplice. All it took was a few sympathetic words to win her trust.

  It never crossed Mary’s mind in the first few weeks after meeting him that as they stood arm in arm looking in shop windows or strolled around the market, he was often engaged in helping himself to someone’s pocket-book, fob-watch or other valuable with his spare hand. She was too enamoured with his charm, excited by his interesting friends and acquaintances, and bowled over by his generosity to her to study him closely.

  By the time she did become aware of it, she was so entrenched in his easy, fun way of life that he could have told her he was a grave robber and she wouldn’t have turned a hair. When he disappeared just after Christmas, leaving her in the dwelling-house he’d taken her to, she was inconsolable.

  The chances were that he’d been caught by the constables, and that was what made her fall in with Mary Haydon and Catherine Fryer. She didn’t want to lose face with these two cut-purses, whom Thomas had held in such high esteem. They appeared so worldly, so very daring, and she needed money to pay the rent on Thomas’s room for when he came back.

  At first she was just a lookout while the other two snipped off purses in the crowded streets and markets. Sometimes she caused a diversion by pretending to faint or claiming that she’d had her own purse snatched. But the day came when Catherine said it was time she took on some of the danger herself, and when they saw the small, neatly dressed woman walking home through the main street with her arms full of parcels, it appeared to be the perfect initiation.

  Maybe if Mary hadn’t been so anxious to prove her courage, she would merely have tripped the woman up and sped off with just one of her parcels. But instead she grabbed the woman’s pretty silk hat with one hand, and scooped up everything she dropped in alarm, throwing the parcels to the other Mary and Catherine before running for it. Unluckily for them, people gave chase, cornered them in an alley and called for the constables.

  Most of the details of Mary’s arrest and imprisonment in Plymouth were hazy to her now, for the journey to Exeter later on eclipsed everything else. It took four days in an open-topped cart where she was shackled to three other women, two of whom were her supposed friends but berated her most of the way for getting them caught too. It was January, and the icy wind swept across the bleak moors, almost cutting them in half with its ferocity. If they wanted to relieve themselves, all the women had to get down together, with the guard leering at them. Every step was torture, for the shackles dug into their tender skin and they weren’t yet practised at moving together. At nights they were thrown into a stable at an inn, with bread and water the only nourishment they received. Mary thought she would die of the cold, in fact she hoped fervently that she would, if only to shut out the scorn and ridicule of her companions and the knowledge that her crime, highway robbery, was a hanging offence.

  On her first night at Exeter Castle it was Bridie who had comforted her and assured her she would become accustomed to the rats, lice, dirt, stale bread and using a slop pail in front of everyone. Mary supposed that she had now, in as much as she accepted that was all part and parcel of prison life and she deserved punishment for what she’d done. But she couldn’t accept that she was to die in a few days’ time, and would never be free to walk country lanes, to watch the sea breaking on the shore, and see the sun set again.

  She wept then, for failing her parents and bringing shame to the family, and for not listening to her conscience when she knew that stealing was wrong.

  It was a well-known fact that as many as half of those sentenced to death would get some sort of reprieve. In the next three days Mary’s fellow prisoners talked of nothing else, everyone hoping they would be among the lucky ones.

  But Mary was no fool. She knew you needed friends on the outside, a concerned and kindly master or mistress, a member of the clergy, or even a friend with money to plead for you. As the hours and days ticked slowly by, it became clear which of her companions were that fortunate. They were the ones who got food, drink, money and even clean clothes sent in.

  Mary looked enviously at the young girl and the woman she knew now to be her aunt, as they ate hot meat pies brought in by one of the gaolers. They had been charged with theft from a lodging-house, but had been protesting their innocence ever since their arrest. Now, judging by the pies and the blankets they’d been given, maybe they had been telling the truth, for someone on the outside was obviously working for their release.

  Yet some of the prisoners, even those
without any hope of reprieve, had become quite jovial in the last couple of days. Maybe it was because in their eyes a quick death was preferable to the misery of a long prison sentence, or a lingering death through gaol fever. There was also a certain amount of status in being hanged, for huge crowds gathered to watch. If they could go to their death with dignity and courage and get the admiration of the watching rabble, they might become heroic figures, maybe even a legend.

  Dick Sullion was one man who felt this way, and he had cheered Mary considerably with his humour and his philosophy of life. Like her, he had been charged with High Toby, the common name for highway robbery. But Dick’s crime fitted the description more accurately than Mary’s did, for he’d lain in wait on isolated roads for unwary travellers, taking not only their valuables but their horses too.

  He was a big man, close to six feet, with a ruddy face, wide shoulders and an irrepressible sense of humour. The first morning after her trial, Mary had woken to hear him singing some bawdy ale-house song about going to the scaffold drunk. She had of course assumed he was drunk then, for those who had money or goods to bribe their gaolers could be inebriated all day and night. But as she sat up, he smiled at her, and his blue eyes were clear and bright.

  ‘No sense in lying around moping,’ he said as if to explain himself. ‘I’ve had a good life, and I reckon it’s better to hang than lose my wits and looks in a place like this.’

  ‘Some of us would rather sleep than think on that,’ she retorted.

  Mary had learned in her first few days of imprisonment back in January that it was advisable to befriend someone tough and wily as a protector, and as Dick appeared to fit the bill in every way, she allowed him to move closer to her, and talked to him.

  She soon discovered that Dick had no money left to buy drink or extra food. He told her he’d blown all he had in the first few weeks before his trial. But even if he couldn’t make her last few days more comfortable in a physical sense, he was strong, tough and knew the ropes, and his chatter and laughter cheered her.

  Dick was Cornish too. It was good to be able to talk about home with him, and it wasn’t long before she told him how she felt about her crime and letting her family down.

  ‘Ain’t no good worrying about that,’ he said, his local dialect as thick and reassuring as her father’s. ‘We all do what we gotta do to survive. It’s the government’s fault we’ve come to this. The high taxes, the Enclosures Acts, they rob us blind at every turn and live in palaces while us lot starve. I took from those who could afford it, so did you. Serves ’em right, I say.’

  Mary, who had been brought up to be honest and God-fearing, didn’t entirely agree with him about that, but she wasn’t going to say so. ‘Aren’t you afraid of dying though?’ she asked instead.

  He shrugged. ‘Been too close to it so many times, it don’t have no meaning any more. What’s hanging compared with a naval flogging? I had my first when I was only sixteen, now that’s summat to be scared of, pain so bad you cry out to death. Hanging’s quick. Don’t you worry, little one, I’ll hold your hand right up to the end.’

  Mary took some comfort in Dick’s words. She made up her mind that if she was to die, she’d do so bravely.

  Four days after her trial, around ten in the morning, the gaoler came to the cell door and called out for Nancy and Anne Brown. They were the aunt and niece accused of robbing a dwelling-house. He said they had been acquitted due to new evidence and were free to leave.

  Despite her own predicament, Mary was delighted for them, and got up to hug and kiss them goodbye. She’d talked to the two women at some length in the previous couple of days and was sure they were as innocent as they claimed to be. They had barely left the cell when the gaoler called out a further four names, three men’s and Mary’s.

  ‘You lot come with me,’ he said curtly.

  Mary turned to Dick in dismay, thinking she was to be led to the gallows then and there.

  Dick put one big hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Don’t reckon it’s that,’ he said confidently. ‘At the end of each quarter session they go through the list and pick out likely folk for transportation. My guess is that’s what they want you for.’

  The gaoler roared at them to follow him, giving Mary no time to say a proper goodbye to either Dick or Bridie.

  As she shuffled along the dark passage behind William, Able and John, her fellow cellmates, their shackles clanking against the rough stone floor, she heard Dick’s voice boom out behind her. ‘Seven years, that’s all it is till you’re free, my little one. Be brave and strong and you’ll see the end of it.’

  Able, a sickly-looking man in his thirties, glanced back at Mary. ‘What does he know?’ he said dourly. ‘I heard tell they ain’t sending no more felons to the Americas now the war’s over.’

  Mary had heard the same thing too while she was in Plymouth. If it was true, it would be a relief, for she’d been brought up with horror stories passed on by sailors of the terrors that lay in store in that far-off land. Convicts there were treated the same as the black slaves, starved, beaten, made to work on the land till they dropped dead from exhaustion. Yet if not to America, where would they be sent, and would it be any better?

  Once out in the yard, Mary saw other prisoners lined up, including Mary Haydon and Catherine Fryer, her old partners in crime. There were five women in all, and some fifteen or sixteen men. Mary Haydon tossed her head and looked the other way when she saw Mary, but Catherine glowered at her, so clearly they still held her responsible for their plight.

  A judge, or at least Mary assumed that’s what he was, by his wig and gown, came down the few steps into the yard, flanked by a couple of other men, then read aloud from a piece of parchment.

  Mary could make no sense of what he was reading. She heard ‘At Assizes and general delivery of the gaol of our Lord the King,’ then what sounded like a string of ‘Sirs’ who were all unknown to her. It wasn’t until she heard her own name mentioned that she began to listen more intently. At the words, ‘His Majesty has been graciously pleased to extend the royal mercy on them,’ Mary’s heart leaped. But as the judge read on, her heart sank again, for it was as Dick had said, mercy on condition they be transported for seven years.

  After the judge had left the prison yard, leaving the prisoners there alone with the guards, they turned to one another, their delight that they weren’t to be hanged mingling with an acute fear of what transportation would mean.

  ‘I never met anyone who ever came back from it,’ one man said gloomily. ‘They must have all died.’

  ‘I know a man that did come back,’ another man retorted loudly. ‘He had money in his pockets too.’

  Mary tried to make sense of the babble of conflicting opinions around her. While she personally felt that a seven-year sentence, however hard, had to be better than hanging, every single person in the yard appeared to be more knowledgeable on the subject than she was, so there was no point in her volunteering that opinion. But as the woman standing next to her began to cry, she put her arm around her to comfort her.

  ‘It’s got to be better than dying,’ she said softly. ‘We’ll be out in the fresh air, we might even be able to escape.’

  Able, who was standing in front of her, must have heard what she said for he turned to her, a scornful expression on his face. ‘That’s if we don’t die on the voyage,’ he said.

  Mary thought privately that he wasn’t long for this world anyway. He had a hacking cough, he was very thin and the only one of them in the cell who showed no eagerness when the daily mouldy bread was dished out.

  ‘As long as I’m still breathing, then I’ll still hope,’ she retorted staunchly.

  Less than an hour later, doors in the prison yard opened and two large horse-drawn carts were led in.

  The prisoners had all pondered on why they had been left out in the yard, but no one had anticipated they would be moved from Exeter Castle that same day. But that was what was planned, and without any furth
er delay, they were chained together into groups of five and ordered up on to the carts. Once again, Mary found herself alongside Catherine and Mary. On the other side of her was the woman she’d comforted earlier, whose name was Elizabeth Cole, and another called Elizabeth Baker. Behind their bench were five men, one of them Able.

  For the first hour, as the cart slowly trundled its way out through Exeter, Catherine Fryer and Mary Haydon kept up a volley of abuse towards Mary.

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ Catherine repeated again and again. ‘You brought us to this.’

  Elizabeth Cole, who went by the name of Bessie, squeezed Mary’s hand in sympathy, and finally called a halt to it.

  ‘Shut yer mouths, you two,’ she snapped at them. ‘We’re all in this together now, whether we like it or not. There ain’t no sense in blaming Mary, you’d have been caught before long anyway. Besides, none of the rest of us wants to hear all that stuff.’

  Mary was touched by Bessie’s intervention. She was an odd-looking woman, red-haired and fat, with a cast in one eye and several teeth missing, but the fact she’d been brave enough to speak out suggested she wasn’t as downtrodden as she looked.

  There was an echo of agreement from the men sitting behind them, and perhaps that finally persuaded the two women to stop, for they lapsed into silence.

  After a little while one of the men in the back prodded Mary. ‘Sweet-talk the guards into telling you where we’re heading,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why me?’ she whispered back.

  ‘You’re the bonniest,’ he replied.

  Up until that moment Mary had fully believed she had absolutely no assets – no money or property she could bribe anyone with, no influential friends. All she had was the clothes she was wearing and they were worn and soiled. But as she glanced at the row of women, she saw she was younger, healthier and stronger than all of them.

  Mary and Catherine had been living by theft for years before she met them. Back then she’d been fooled by their gaudy clothes into thinking they were superior to her in every way. But cheap silk didn’t wear well, not in prison, and their pinched features and grey skin, the hollow look in their eyes and their gutter language showed up what they really were. As for Bessie and Elizabeth, while she didn’t yet know what crimes they had committed, or anything of their family background, they both had that worn-out appearance she had observed so often among the very poorest back home in Fowey.